Tag: central bank

Austria mulling gold repatriation

The Austrian state audit court says the central bank should address the concentration risk of storing 80% of its gold reserves with the Bank of England, Standard reports, citing draft audit report.

The court has advised the central bank to diversify storage locations, and contract partners, Bloomberg reported.

The Austrian central bank is currently reviewing gold storage concept, and doesn’t rule out relocating some of its gold from London to Austria.

Standard cited unidentified central bank officials.

The gold reserves of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) and their deposits in the UK and in Switzerland are a recurring theme in political discussions.

Especially after the example of the Deutsche Bundesbank the Austrians are serious about bringing gold home.

Given the “high concentration of risk in the Bank of England” the bank is also reviewing the “actual spread of the storage locations”.

Austria has 280 tons gold reserves, according to 2013 annual report, but only a small part (17 percent) is kept in Vienna, while 80 percent of the reserves are located in London, and three percent in Switzerland.

In comparison, the German Bundesbank has 3400 tons of gold, about half of it in the United States.

The decision was taken to resettle half of the gold to Germany.

Marine Le Pen: Open letter to French Central Bank Governor

The French Front National’s leader Marine Le Pen has sent a letter to the Governor of the French Central Bank, the Banque de France, demanding that France join the list of nations which have repatriated their gold, or at least have tried.

In her letter,  Le Pen, who would be elected president of France if elections were held today, demands a gold audit.

Mr. Christian Noyer

Governor of the Banque de France
31 rue Croix des Petits-Champs
75049 PARIS Cedex 01

Nanterre, November 24, 2014

Open letter to Mr Christian Noyer on the gold reserves of France

Dear Governor

On behalf of the French and in my capacity as the main opposition leader, I am writing to you because it is my duty to present a petition on the gold reserves of France, in the best interests of our nation.

Even before the outbreak of the 2008 crisis, the National Front had anticipated and informed the political institutions of the future worsening of the macro-economic and geopolitical context. As part of the increasingly libertarian business model adopted by France under pressure from Brussels, economic fundamentals have not shown improvement.

All the French can see is that the austerity policies demanded by the European Union and the ECB and carried out by the government are a proven failure and have had serious consequences for our country.

The monetary institution you lead has a historic mission to be the central bank depositary of the national monetary reserves including gold reserves. According to our strategic vision and sovereignty, they belong neither to the State nor to the Banque de France, but the French people and also serve as the ultimate guarantee for the public debt and our money.

In the money cold war that is being fought between the West and BRICS countries, gold is increasingly playing an important role. According to the World Gold Council, the official reserves of gold from China, India and Russia increased significantly between 2007 and 2013.

For these reasons and in light of the rapid increase of global systemic risks, it is of the utmost importance to the future solvency of our nation to engage, by mid-2015, in a detailed audit, the results of which will be the subject of a report.

Le Pen also demands a complete inventory of the quantities of physical gold, all 2435 tonnes, as well as their quality (serial number, purity, bars ‘Good Delivery’etc.), conducted by an independent French body. This inventory will need to indicate the country in which the gold reserves are stored, she adds.

Over the period 2004-2012, about 614,6 tonnes of gold have been sold by France while at the same time the other Eurosystem central banks including the ECB pledged to limit their gold sales. According to a report by the Court of Auditors of 2012, this is extremely costly to the government and constitutes a serious violation of the national heritage, carried out without any democratic consultation.

Le Pen requests the urgent repatriation of all gold reserves from abroad.

Just like your heroic predecessors of the Bank of France in 1939 and 1940 had organized the evacuation of French gold, you will need to undertake this vast security operation of the national treasury, a patriotic act which will be recognized in time by public opinion.

I hope that, respectful of your duties as a high official in the service of the State, you will show the commitment and courage necessary to defend the general interest of our country. The challenge is considerable, it is the future of France which is at stake!

I beg you to accept, Sir, the Governor, the expression of my highest consideration.

Marine Le Pen

Ukraine’s gold has vanished

The disappearance of Ukraine’s gold has been confirmed, and perhaps it is time to refresh the “unconfirmed” story that a little after the current Ukraine regime took power the bulk of Ukraine’s gold was taken to the United States.

The NY Fed has still not answered requests for a comment as to whether Ukraine’s gold has been redomiciled at the gold vault located some 80 feet below Liberty 33.

According to recent data, the value of Ukraine gold should be $988.7 million. That is the value of gold proportion of gold in gold reserves is 8%. If you believe Gontareva, it turns out there is a mere $123.6 million in gold remaining.

The figure is fantastic, considering that the amount of gold at the end of February (when the new authorities have already taken key positions) was $1.8 billion or 12% of the reserves.

In other words, since the beginning of the year gold reserves dropped almost 16 times. Gold stock in February were approximately 21 tons of gold, the presence of which was once proudly reported by Sergei Arbuzov, who led the NBU in 2010-2012. So what happened to 20.8 tons of gold?

Explaining the dramatic reduction in the context of the hryvnia devaluation through gold sales is impossible. After all, 92% of the reserves of the National Bank is in the form of a foreign currency that is much easier to use to maintain hryvnia levels and cover current liabilities. Besides since March the international price of gold has plummeted. Selling gold under such circumstances is a crime. In fact it would be more expedient to increase gold reserves through currency conversion in precious metals.

As history shows, the reduction of the gold reserves in the context of an acute political crisis is usually preceded by the collapse of the state.

From iskra-news

Tonight, 07-03-2014 around at 2:00 am, an unregistered transport plane took off took off from Boryspil airport. According to Boryspil staff, prior to the plane’s appearance, four trucks and two cargo minibuses arrived at the airport all with their license plates missing. Fifteen people in black uniforms, masks and body armor stepped out, some armed with machine guns. These people loaded the plane with more than forty heavy boxes.

After this, several mysterious men arrived and also entered the plane. The loading was carried out in a hurry. After unloading, the plateless cars immediately left the runway, and the plane took off on an emergency basis.

Airport officials who saw this mysterious “special operation” immediately notified the administration of the airport, which however strongly advised them “not to meddle in other people’s business.”

Later, the editors were called by one of the senior officials of the former Ministry of Income and Fees, who reported that, according to him, tonight on the orders of one of the “new leaders” of Ukraine, all the gold reserves of the Ukraine were taken to the United States.

In an interview on Ukraine TV, none other than the head of the Ukraine Central Bank made the stunning admission that “in the vaults of the central bank there is almost no gold left. There is a small amount of gold bullion left, but it’s just 1% of reserves.”

Denmark’s central bank to stop printing money

With more and more people paying with credit cards and their smartphones, Denmark’s central bank Nationalbanken says it no longer pays to print banknotes or mint coins.

By the end of 2016, Nationalbanken plans to outsource all of its printing and minting services to an external supplier.

“Although the amount of cash circulating in Denmark continues to be high, society’s demand for new banknotes and coins has been falling for years, and Nationalbanken has no expectations that the trend will be reversed,” the bank wrote in a press release.

In addition to the rise in alternative paying options, the central bank also said that today’s banknotes and coins are better recirculated into the economy and made of a better quality that ensures a longer shelf life. When viewed as a whole, the bank has determined that note and coin production is no a longer financially sound option.

The bank said that the move to an external supplier will result in a total savings of 100 million kroner ($17.2 million) through 2020.

In its statement, the bank stressed that having notes and coins produced externally would not affect the bank’s central role.

“Nationalbanken will continue to be the issuing authority for banknotes and coins and will maintain its expertise in the area of notes and coins. It is only the internal production of the notes and coins that will henceforth by done by external suppliers,” it wrote.

Source: The Local

Swiss and Chinese central banks enter into currency swap

The Swiss National Bank and the People’s Bank of China reached a currency swap agreement on Monday, allowing the two central banks to buy and sell their currencies up to a limit of 150 billion renminbi, or 21 billion Swiss francs ($23.4 billion).

The deal will also allow the Swiss central bank to invest some of its huge accumulation of foreign exchange reserves in the Chinese bond market, the SNB said in a statement Monday.

The Zurich-based SNB said the agreement will further strengthen collaboration between it and its Chinese counterpart and is a “key requisite for the development of a renminbi market in Switzerland.” It could also facilitate trade and investment between the two countries, the PBOC said.

Switzerland is the latest of a series of countries to set up swap lines with China, which is keen to promote the international use of the yuan.

Last year China signed swap agreements with the European Central Bank and a clutch of others, including the U.K., Brazil and Indonesia.

The agreement between China and Switzerland has a term of three years and can be renewed thereafter, the PBOC said. – Dow Jones Business News

Hackers block Swedish govt. and CB websites

Fictional Swedish hacker Lisbeth Salander has some real-life imitators

Websites operated by Sweden’s central bank, parliament as well the security service were Friday offline or reported disturbances, the day after hackers had threatened to target them.

Hackers believed to be linked to the group Anonymous on Thursday urged supporters to conduct the so-called denial of service (DDoS) attack after an internet company was searched by Swedish police.

In a video posted on YouTube, an anonymous spokesman had warned of new attacks on Friday, citing that “the raid on PRQ disabled many of our torrent sites. We see this as a crime against freedom-to-information.”

A denial of service attack involves web addresses being hit by a flood of traffic, making the website unaccessible.

The Swedish Prosecution Authority’s website was also offline as was that of the Anti-Piracy Agency formed by Swedish film and computer game producers and distributors that challenge illegal file-sharing.

The search of the internet company, which the prosecution authority named as PeriQ Networks AB, ended Wednesday and several servers were seized. The suspicions centred on suspected copyright infringements.

Similar attacks have hit other sites earlier this week.

Some news reports suggested that PRQ had links with the file-sharing website The Pirate Bay. Four members of the website have in the past been sentenced for copyright infringement. One of its members, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, was last month extradited from Cambodia on suspicion of another case of cyber crime.

Pirate Bay, which allows users to share music and video files, was started in 2003, according to its website. It says it does not store copyrighted or illegal material. – DPA