MEXICO’S FEDERAL AUDIT DEMANDS PHYSICAL INSPECTION OF SOVEREIGN GOLD HOLDINGS
Today we have an exclusive note on this blog, but hopefully this can be known through the “mainstream media” too: the Mexican Superior Audit of the Federation (“ASF” in Spanish), in its “
Report of Supreme Audit Results of the 2011 Public Account” delivered last week to the Chamber of Deputies, gave a stern “recommendation” to the Bank of Mexico (Banxico).
The reason is one of the most important issues we have addressed here: the gold reserves of our country.
As you may recall, last year we informed that after four months of legal wrangling with Banxico, it was forced to give us the information we wanted (that of course they did not want to disclose), about the supposed physical location of Mexico’s sovereign gold holdings.
Thanks to that, we found out that 95 percent of the Mexican gold reserves (about 125 tonnes) were abroad, and almost all (99%), in London, England.
Well, the ASF documented the purchase of 100 tonnes of gold that was made in 2011, for a total of 4,543 million dollars.
In its report, the ASF says that a confirmation of the operation was made with the counterparty, but also "
found that Banxico has not conducted physical inspections to gold to verify compliance with the terms of acquisition and the conditions regarding its storage, in order to be certain of the physical custody of this asset." Our emphasis.
Moreover, the central bank only has documents which establish the terms and conditions, the dates of the transactions and payment vouchers. That's all.
In other words, Banxico invested 4.5 billion dollars and released the money
without making any confirmation of the existence of the gold purchased, or of the location of the vaults where the gold bars were supposed to be held. Mere “paper gold”.
The ASF states that the Central Bank gave them some arguments on why they did not consider any verification as necessary, and assured them that the gold reserves were under the custody of "
a prestigious financial institution". It seems that Banxico has a “blind faith” regarding such an institution.
According to the report, the Bank of Mexico said that the metal seller “only” offers services to other central banks and monetary authorities, and "
places gold in custody in a bank of the United Kingdom" who "
sets strict standards for weight and purity which gold bars must meet, in order to be received under custody." Almost a religious act for Banxico.
In this blog it’s been documented that this custodian is none other than the famous Bank of England, which is supposed to provide its services on an "allocated basis". That is, that customers have, or should have, a list of every ingot owned with serial number and stamped certifications of purity.
Banxico has none of these lists. Last year it could not answer a single question made by this journalist, through a legal “Request for Information”, about the number of bars that make up the Mexican gold reserves. The central bank only said that “
due to the variability of the content of gold in the bars, it is not possible to specify with certainty the exact number of bars purchased." Oops!
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