Germany’s court of Audit gets suspicious as Germans not getting access to check gold reserves abroad

The Bundesbank has the second largest gold reserves in the world. End of 2011 there were 3396 tons - with a fabulous value of 133 billion euros. After the soaring price of gold it is currently likely to reach about 142 billion euros. The sticking point: these reserves are largely not stored in Germany. 66 percent of the inventory is stored in an underground depot of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 21 percent stored at Bank of England in London and eight percent at the Banque de France in Paris. Only five percent are located in Germany.

Reason enough to take the CDU deputies Philipp Missfelder and Marco Wanderwitz, to check the German gold reserves abroad. In February Mißfelder had visited the Federal Reserve Bank, now he wanted to arrange a meeting with his colleagues in Paris and London - and failed in all 3 attempts.

As the german "Bild" newspaper reported on Monday, Bundesbank (Germany’s central bank) board member Carl-Ludwig Thiele had addressed a letter to Mißfelder and Wanderwitz. In the letter, the German banker writes, that the central banks in Paris and London do not possess offices that allow for visits.

Court of Audit auditors now criticize that the gold stored abroad "was never recorded by the Bundesbank itself physically or by other independent auditors and checked for authenticity and weight." The Bundesbank relied solely on written confirmations of the depositary.