Last night as Western economic sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine started to get more serious, your secretary/treasurer sent a question to the press office of the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland:
"Is the BIS freezing or otherwise restricting Russian assets and transactions through the BIS?"
GATA has not yet received a reply from the BIS. But this morning Reuters published a report quoting a BIS spokeswoman saying: "The BIS will not be an avenue for sanctions to be circumvented":
But that doesn't quite answer GATA's question, which was essentially whether the BIS is still undertaking any transactions for the Russian central bank, the Bank of Russia. Of course the BIS is a major gold broker for central banks and owns much gold itself, and the BIS and Bank of England are historically notorious for helping Nazi Germany expropriate the gold held by Czechoslovakia at the Bank of England following the Nazi occupation of that country in 1939:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jul/31/bank-of-england-and-nazis-stolen-gold
The BIS acknowledges participating in this dirty little affair:
https://www.bis.org/about/history_2ww2.htm
So, as GATA asked yesterday, is the BIS undertaking any transactions for the Bank of Russia, quite apart from any that might be construed as circumventing sanctions? If so, what are those transactions, and do any involve gold, the international currency par excellence?
In the past the BIS has tended to respond to GATA's inquiries promptly, though not necessarily to answer them:
http://www.gata.org/node/17793
Maybe the bank still will respond to GATA's question of yesterday. In the meantime, it seems fair to wonder if the bank again may be involved in activity much of the world might consider dishonorable or worse.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org
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