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In response to Mr Adams’ videos, the RBA earlier this month added a new page on its website with a series of questions and answers about its gold holdings.
“The RBA’s gold is held at the BoE in an ‘allocated’ account, such that individual bars (with specified bar serial numbers) are attributable to the RBA,” it said.
“The Reserve Bank has processes in place to ensure that its specified gold bars are maintained appropriately. Inventory reconciliation — including of unique serial numbers — is undertaken periodically, or after any movements on the RBA’s account. Additionally, the Reserve Bank audits its gold processes, including gold holdings at the Bank of England.”
Mr Adams says he still has unanswered questions — but in an email this month, a spokeswoman told him the bank had “no further answers” for him.
“They haven’t explained what inventory reconciliation means,” he said. “I think we have a spreadsheet full of serial numbers and we’re checking with BoE to ensure they match. It does not mean you’re checking the physical gold.”
Mr Adams said he was “not saying the conspiracy is true or false, I’m only saying 99.9 per cent of it is not in Australia and the RBA can’t say why it’s prudent we have our gold not physically in the country”.
“The gold may be missing or the gold may be there but even if it is there are a lot of Australians who say just bring the gold back,” he said.
Speaking at the CEDA annual dinner in Melbourne on Tuesday night, RBA governor Philip Lowe seemed amused at a question from the audience on the topic.
“No, we do regular audits of our gold reserves to make sure (it is) all there and accounted for,” he said. “I can report that every audit we get a clean bill of health there.”
Mr Lowe said the gold reserves were kept in London because “that’s where the centre of the gold lending market is”. “By (lending) out our gold temporarily we can earn a small incremental return on it and cover some of the costs of holding those reserves,” he said.
“It’s the right place for the gold to be, we don’t have any plans to sell any more, to buy any more, or to bring it back to Australia.”
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