City: Lawyer probes Clinton gold claims
Source: The Sunday Telegraph London
ONE of America's most senior lawyers has been hired to investigate unfounded allegations on the internet that Hillary Clinton made huge profits from the recent slump in the price of gold
The US Gold Anti Trust Action Committee (GATAC) has hired one of America's biggest anti-trust law firms to investigate allegations that a blind trust set up for America's First Lady "shorted gold financial instruments" just before the the Bank of England's announcement of gold sales on May 7. The announcement caused a slump in the gold price.
The allegation - uncluttered by fact and bare of supporting evidence - surfaced on a US website for financial market aficionadoes last weekend.
"If true", said Bill Murphy, GATAC's chairman, "it is an outrage and is further anecdotal evidence of the conspiratorial nature of the Bank of England gold sales and of the high level nature of the manipulation of the gold market."
GATAC has retained the Philadelphia firm of Berger & Montague to investigate the rumours. The lawyer on the case is Jerome Marcus, described by Murphy as "the silent brains" behind the Paula Jones case for five years.
Marcus said: "We have just begun our inquiries and there is little as yet to report. Even if there was any transaction through a blind trust this would raise questions of credibility. These people all know each other. It is very tantalising but we have to establish first whether it happened."
The allegation is the latest twist in a series of wild conspiracy theories claiming massive gold market manipulation, and doubtless the fact that Clinton's recent down payment for a new home in Westchester County, New York, came from her blind trust will further fuel imaginations.
GATAC has been campaigning for months for a halt to IMF and central bank gold sales and for an investigation into alleged gold market manipulation.
Murphy has written to Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. His 21-page letter is testimony, if nothing else, to the fact that nothing and no-one is being ruled out in GATAC's global hunt for gold market manipulators.
This year the price of gold has fallen from more than $280 an ounce to $256.65 now, the bulk of this fall coming after the surprise announcement by Gordon Brown of a programme of Bank of England gold sales.
The first of these auctions was held in July, and the second is due next week.
(Copyright 1999 (c) The Telegraph plc, London)
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