Royal Canadian Mint ‘Lost’ Tens of Millions of Dollars Worth of Gold
June 9th, 2009* chortling *
Via: The Star:
The mint’s missing stock of precious metals is worth tens of millions of dollars, the Star has learned.
While officials at the Royal Canadian Mint have not publicly released a value, insiders have confirmed that auditors are trying to track precious metals, believed to be gold, worth in the “double digits” of millions.
At today’s prices, $10 million worth of gold would weigh more than 250 kilograms.
An external audit, launched in early March, is trying to reconcile the mint’s records with the physical stocks of gold, silver, platinum and palladium, the four precious metals used by the Crown corporation in its production of coins and collector sets.
Mint officials remain confident that bookkeeping errors are to blame. But they haven’t ruled out theft and some at the institution now believe a police probe is inevitable if the review – due to be released in two weeks – is unable to provide good answers.
Given the high value of the missing metals, NDP MP Thomas Mulcair said yesterday that mint staff should be calling on police to immediately launch a criminal investigation.
“There’s no possible way to explain the loss of tens of millions of dollars through simple administrative or bureaucratic foul-ups and missteps,” he said in an interview.
He faulted the Conservative government for not being more forthcoming about the controversy.
“People understand that mistakes happen … but they tried to dismiss the whole thing from the beginning,” said Mulcair (Outremont). “Well, if there’s tens of millions of dollars missing, there’s clearly lots to worry about… This is a really serious amount of money and it deserves really serious attention.”
Liberal MP Joe Volpe (Eglinton—Lawrence) said the mint’s international reputation – it produces coins for at least 12 other nations – is taking a battering each day the probe drags on with the prospect security may have been breached.
“How long does it take for this government to figure out what is going on?” Volpe said. “Either money is running out the door or they have a serious problem making two and two add up to four.”
In fact, Volpe suggested the mint and the government already know the results of the audit and are sitting on bad news. “I suspect they have the answer and they have reason for not publicizing it,” he said.
Mint spokeswoman Christine Aquino yesterday declined to comment on the value of the metals or any aspect of the audit.
“We’re going to wait for the review to come out in the next couple of weeks,” she said.
However, last week she said an unprecedented demand for gold in 2008 put pressure on the mint’s internal control systems, which led to the “unreconciled difference” between the gold on hand and the value recorded in the mint’s books.
In 2007, the mint refined a total of 5.4 million troy ounces of precious metals; of that, gold represented 2.8 million troy ounces, or about 86,000 kilograms. The mint sold 278,616 troy ounces of gold bullion in the form of coins, wafers and bars.
“The announcement comes after an external audit was launched to reconcile the mint’s records with the physical stock of metals.”
The 500-lb elephant in this article is: what or who triggered this audit.
Maybe I’ve been living in America for too long, but I’ve come to believe that the whole point of owning gold is to never have it actually audited. There’s simply no benefit to publicly declaring what the actual net worth of precious metals holdings may be.
I suspect somebody bigger than the Canadian Gov’t stepped forward and said “show me the money”. Now they’re having to admit they really didn’t have as much as they claimed.
Yep @lagavulin, e tu, I wonder – what triggered this audit? This is a VERY LARGE ELEPHANT. With HUGE IVORY Tusks (BALLS).
If you live in the US and hold de oro, when you cash it in, its income re numanistic. Got to, got to claim it or well, your life raft will have a big hole in it.
Live honestly is all I can say at this time.
Never sold any, don’t plan to. Figure when that time comes the revenuers will be on unemployment and won’t have access to their internet servers.