trust you saw this?
just in in-tray
I guess we'll find out what a "significant quantity" is...
Mint Can't Account for Missing Gold
By Ian Macleod
Ottawa (Ontario, Canada) Citizen
Tuesday, June , 2009
ottawacitizen.com.
OTTAWA -- A significant quantity of gold, silver, and other precious metals is unaccounted for at the Royal Canadian Mint.
External auditors are investigating a discrepancy between the mint's 2008 financial accounting of its precious metals holdings and the physical stockpile at the plant on Sussex Drive in Ottawa.
The mystery raises possibilities from sloppy bookkeeping to a gold heist.
Officials with the commercial Crown corporation are saying little and refuse to confirm the amount and value of the unaccounted for gold, silver, and palladium.
"An unprecedented demand in gold in 2008 has led to an unreconciled difference between the mint's financial statements and the physical count of precious metals. There's a difference there that we're looking into," Christine Aquino, mint spokeswoman, said in a prepared statement Tuesday in response to questions from the Ottawa Citizen.
"We're taking this very seriously. We're conducting a thorough review and we're expected to have that completed within the month. (It) includes the analysis of precious metal by-products and financial data. We've allocated all necessary resources to this review."
She stressed police have not been called into what mint officials consider an internal matter. She would not say whether the gold and other metals in question were part of the refinery and bullion operation or one of the mint's three other business lines: producing Canadian circulating coins, designing and producing coinage for foreign countries, and numismatics.
"We're looking at many different angles right now," she said.
The mint's Ottawa headquarters houses one of the world's leading gold and silver refineries, turning out almost 2.8 million troy ounces of refined gold in 2007.
Another 369,000 ounces of refined silver were produced as a byproduct of refining the gold from a number of sources, including gold ore, scrap recyclers, financial institutions and industry. (A troy ounce is the traditional unit of weight for precious metals and equals 1.097 ounces.)
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