Why Is Russia Sending Planes Full of Gold to London?

The State Duma wants answers as gold pours out of Russia

Paper reserves are up $25 billion, but gold holdings haven’t budged

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To avoid any misunderstandings, let’s review some facts: Russia’s gold reserves are among the largest in the world. Definitely within the top five. (In September, Reuters reported Russia’s gold and foreign exchange reserves were the world’s fourth-largest.) Russia is also a top gold producer.

Over the past decade or so, Russia’s gold-mongering has spawned rumors and “reports” (of wildly varying veracity) detailing how Moscow was preparing to unveil a bullion-backed ruble that would torpedo the US dollar. A more believable variant of this theory was that Moscow simply saw gold as dependable store of value as it rid itself of US Treasuries. In January, Bloomberg revealed that Russia’s “multi-year drive to reduce exposure to US assets” had resulted in its gold holdings exceeding its US dollar reserves for the first time on record.

Given Russia’s undeniable penchant for gold, it would be only logical that the Russian government, facing a dizzying array of domestic and geopolitical uncertainties that could trigger severe economic chaos, would be greedily gobbling up all the shiny bullion it could get its hands on.

For example, Pepe Escobar recently suggested Russia might accept payments for oil and gas in gold if it is disconnected from SWIFT.

Other analysts have made similar claims in the past weeks and months. It’s a very popular theory, this idea that Russia is fiat-phobic and is dreaming of gold, always.

Thing is: the exact opposite is true—at least for now. Russia is being drained of gold to such an unprecedented extent that lawmakers are demanding answers. Russia’s central bank stopped buying gold in April 2020, and gave the greenlight to private banks allowing them to export their gold abroad:

The situation is somewhat unprecedented: nearly all the gold mined in Russia is being flown to London, the epicenter of precious metals trading.

This has been going on for nearly two years, since the start of the coronavirus crisis. In April, Economist Valentin Katasonov gave two big thumbs down to the policy, describing the Bank of Russia’s refusal to buy bullion as “golden giveaways.”

According to Finanz.ru, in October 2020, Russia’s central bank began selling its gold reserves for the first time in thirteen years.

However, according to the Bank of Russia’s website, the value of its gold holdings in USD has only gone down slightly since a year ago. So we’re not talking about a massive sell-off. In fact, gold reserves went up very slightly in November—as we understand it, because the Bank of Russia received a cut from domestic producers. It was technically not a “purchase” though. [Russia receives some gold as tax in return for mineral rights.]

in USD terms, no significant change from a year ago

So the obvious question is: why is Russia betraying its goldbug instincts and swapping bullion for bills?

The country decided to dip into its gold holdings due to a shortage of foreign exchange earnings resulting from the catastrophic collapse in oil and gas prices once COVID hit. (Remember when a barrel of oil was selling for negative dollars?)

After a bit of research into this issue we found the following and easy-to-understand analysis:

There are a lot of theories as to why central banks, and Russia in particular, are cutting down gold purchases, but in the case of Russia the reason is simply that they need cash, this according to Jeff Christian, managing partner of CPM Group.

“The Russian government is strapped for cash. It’s facing the pandemic that everybody else is facing, but it was slow to move on it so it’s got serious problems there. It still has sanctions, it doesn’t have a lot of foreign exchange coming in, it’s losing money on every barrel of oil that it sold in Russia,” Christian told Kitco News. It doesn’t have the money to buy gold. [“Strapped for cash”, but they managed to add another $25bn of foreign paper.]

The uptick in sales to London were also triggered, at least in part, by uncertainties surrounding Brexit.

So nothing nefarious, right? The international banking cartel isn’t robbing the country of its gold before Hermann Gräf and the Bank of Russia force the digital ruble and the “Sbercoin” on hapless Russians, right? Maybe.

The massive export of gold is perhaps sensible on paper—but still kind of suspicious. Especially when private banks are involved.

For example, in March 2020, more than a ton of non-government gold was flown out of Russia—and apparently in such a panicked state that they left some gold bars on the runway. We’re not even joking.

The potential for foul play became a bit more likely in June, when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law easing foreign exchange controls for gold exporters. The loosened regulations mean that sales of precious metals are now exempted from the requirement to credit the proceeds to Russian accounts. The cash can now be kept in Western banks.

As we understand it, this means gold could be mined in Russia and sold in London—with the earnings kept in euros in a Swiss bank account (for example).

Anyway, next time you’re at a cocktail party and someone mentions how Russia is scooping up all the world’s gold, for freedom, you can be that annoying person and say: “Well, actually…”

Source: Edward Slavquat

17 Comments
  1. Rick says

    I don’t like it. If you read Larouche as I have, you would understand that self-sufficiency should be the first goal of a sovereign nation-state. That’s what sovereign means. Exporting gold should be and likely is a crime-against-sovereignty. The Ruble should be gold-backed at this point and Rubles can be traded bilaterally without SWIFT.

    1. TZVI says

      Not likely. I don’t see any state allowing holders of Paper to exchange for real gold. ( a real Gold Standard) In that case, even if it’s backed by Gold, it’s still paper.

      The other way to do a Gold standard would be to issue Coins meant to be circulated with a Seigniorage that is not beyond ridiculous.

  2. Jerry Hood says

    Too many khazarian oligarchs riding freemason Rus.Putin! To City of London, the Canary Wharf pussy shaped river-bend on Thames, the pussy loving khazars loves to settle there and committ money-laundering there…

  3. Jiří Menšík says

    When oil was expensive and gold cheap, Russians were buying gold.

    Then when oil got cheap and gold expensive, Russians started to sell it.

    It makes sense to me.

    1. Juan says

      Yup, gold has no use if you sit on it.

  4. ken says

    Typical of governments everywhere. All governments go mafia. All governments go tyrannical. The government of Russia bought the gold with taxes from the People as governments have no money of their own. Then the gold just disappears,,, like the US holdings. The US government refuses to inventory the gold so that indicates it is not there.

    The People have been led to think the government fiat is money and gold is just a relic so ignorance is bliss. Not so with the big boys…

    The fake virus gave them the excuse to sell gold as they shut down economies and had no incoming taxes. This would also give them cover when they either sold gold for personal gain or just squirreled it away somewhere.

    With Putin firmly in the clutches of Klaus Schwab’s WEF I wouldn’t let him near my measly wallet much less the nations gold vaults.

    1. TZVI says

      Russia is down less than a ton in terms of gov. holdings. It costs real money to fund the Military, the USA just makes 1’s and many 0’s on a computer and it still spends, even if it is inflated.

      1. Juan says

        Yeah, government spending outcrowds civilian spending, thus impoverishing them through hidden taxes. Fake money must end.

    2. Mariberg says

      Yeah, it’s worse… “All governments ARE mafia. All governments ARE tyrannical” by its VERY DEFINITION of the word government and, of course, all governments are ruled by a cabal of psychopaths — https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html

      The evidence is irrefutable… IF you look honestly, that is.

  5. Gerald says

    Russias FX reserves have hit record highs

    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/06/01/russias-currency-reserves-hit-record-600bln-a74064

    https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/foreign-exchange-reserves

    They don’t need cash. Barking up the wrong tree I’m afraid. Maybe do more than ‘a little research’ next time.

    An occaisional ton of gold is nothing compared to their reserves, Russia has ditched most of its dollars also so buying American goods may be paid for otherwise, through London via gold perhaps. There are many reasons and that’s why this story isn’t even a story.

  6. nnn says

    Zionist mafia transferring gold to Israeli accounts. Putin is an Israeli puppet

  7. Mr Reynard says

    From the Horse’s mouth … To all of you worshipers of paper $ ….

    Gold is money, everything else is credit” J.P. Morgan

    “Money is by nature gold and silver” Karl Marx

  8. TZVI says

    Key word “PRIVATE BANKS.” Seems Russia would rather use the Quid to prop up its economy with Gold close to 2K ( 1700-1850) these last couple of years…that is light years ahead of Switzerland that sold half it’s state holdings when Gold was at a low point ( 330-480) close to 2 decades ago.

    Russia’s gold is still mostly in ground, they can snatch up more in 2022 if they deem so…

  9. Howard T. Lewis III says

    Silly web site. It is OBVIOUS why Putin sends his gold to London. Putin is rebelling against the Rothschild world wide bank and the British Empire……………………….?
    ….I’ll get back to you……………

  10. mothman777 says

    Gold is just shiny muck, albeit with good conductivity. You cannot eat it or keep warm with it or live in it. Real wealth in this dimension is human genius, skill, cultured societal will to work with a good spirit with good purpose, and abundance of basic material commodities to work with.

    Besides, what fools will indefinitely want to trade the greater part of real living commodities produced by their hard labour for something that is just shiny and does not corrode? There are industrial alternatives, and vanity has its limits.

    When a nation invests the greater proportion of the GNP of their entire nation in gold, when gold is actually quite useless except for the vain or for plating a few electrical terminals, how long can that deception go on?

    All these people saying gold is this or that are as realistic as those suffering with Dutch tulip bulb mania (unless, of course the lizard people are secretly having the entire world economy devoted to digging this stuff up to provide the space shield for their travelling planet). Not saying lizard people don’t exist.

    1. TZVI says

      Gold and Silver are (were) found on every continent, they are less rare than we like to believe. That being said Gold and silver reflect the Human effort it takes to mine, and refine the metals…they are more honest money than paper Shekel, Pound, Dollar, Dinar, or Drachma….all of which started out as metal.

      Look how much high end steels go for, and you will see people pay lots of paper Dollars for high end products…everything has a certain value.

      1. mothman777 says

        Thankyou for your reply, I agree that silver and gold have a certain value both in terms of the efforts required to obtain them, and of course in their aesthetic appeal for use in jewellery etc. and in industry. However, something odd is going on when huge reserves are stashed away, way beyond any practical necessity that we ‘earthlings’ know of, and something is very odd when the prices of these commodities are totally manipulated on a daily basis by the Rothschilds et al to exploit others, and something is odd when governments routinely translate more useful commodities that actually keep people alive on a constant daily basis into gold which apparently just sits in vaults, or does it?

        Labour and years of people’s lives are thus being wasted by having people essentially just work to accumulate gold in national vaults, that really, they are not actually benefitting from in the slightest. How about the governments release water-powered car technology, anti-gravity technology, Rife technology to cure all cancers and all pathogenic diseases? Those holding those technologies secret and suppressing them could do that overnight if they were actually benevolent and not actually hostile military occupation governments who are actually inimical towards human life and life of all other native species on this planet.

        I wonder if the Tribally-named Fort Knox federal reserve is really empty as some say. As of March 2021, 147.3 million ounces, about half of the Treasury’s stored gold (as well as valuables of other federal agencies) were kept at Fort Knox. Highest historic gold holdings: 649.6 million ounces (December 31, 1941). What have they done with the rest, is it all used in computer circuits and jewellery?

        Any supposed solid currency value of gold and silver is entirely meaningless and void in reality in any case when the price is manipulated arbitrarily by the Rothschilds every day to suit their own money-gathering schemes.

        I rather favour non-usurious barter trading on both small scale high street scale trading and barter trading on major international scales, trading all kinds of commodities, as I cannot see any real ultimate value in gold and silver alone, though of course, several other precious metals are held to be of great value, such as rhodium etc. though small bars or coins of any precious metals could be used in the very short term as an intermediate measure to facilitate trading exchanges, especially encased in plastic to prevent them being interfered with by criminals, with electronic devices used to ascertain their genuine purity, in view of tungsten bars having been found coated in gold plate etc. Precious metals really only have very short term assured value, with their values highly unstable, take for instance silver that goes up or down a few percent every day, for no real or valid reason at all.

        Inflation should not be occurring at all, and is produced entirely by the criminal act of usury, enabled by controlled and corrupt governments and banks run by the same people acting in collusion together. National Socialist Germany successfully banned usury and thus benefitted immensely.

        One of the worst forms of usurious exploitation used to entrap and enslave people over decades of their lives is fractional reserve banking which produces massive inflation, this massive and principal cause of inflation of course never being declared in university courses or by the financial times papers or by any government. A bank is permitted by law to lend out 90% of a loan in newly printed paper or numbers on a screen, so a mortgage borrower may ‘borrow’ £100,000, but in reality, only borrow £10,000 actual commodities in terms of real cash backed by real commodities held by the bank at that time, so the banks ‘lend’ 90% newly-created mere thin air and then demand real commodities produced by real hard labour in exchange that must be produced over several decades of hard work, thus enslaving people through clever trickery, and ‘borrowers’ are then required to pay back 3 times the face value of that ‘loan’ over 25 years or so, totalling £300,000, which they may think fair ‘with inflation being what it is and all’, though almost nobody realizes that they are in fact paying back a massive 30 times what they were really lent, and then the Tribally owned banks protest poverty, the banks falsely declare that they themselves have been robbed blind and that it is themselves who are in danger of going out of business (whatever would we do then without them to maintain honest trade? There would be chaos we are conditioned to think), when in reality it is the banks themselves who are perpetuating chaos and slavery themselves, they fraudulently protest they need bail-outs, and get them, and then fail to invest that money in propping up their business as has been proven, just frittering it away, then even ask for another bail out, and get one, and then even charge money to people who wish to deposit money in their banks.

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