You may have heard Venezuela is having a bit of a tough time. It’s in its 5th year of recession resulting in ridiculous rates of inflation as well as a growing rate of hunger and disease. Matters have only been made worse thanks to old mate Trump and his financial sanctions that essentially mean the country can’t borrow money from international markets. What do they think will help? Their almost $700M worth of gold currently sitting with the Bank Of England.
Reported by Reuters, they spoke to two inside sources who claimed the move was due to new sanctions recently announced by the US that will essentially stop US people getting involved with gold sales from “corrupt or deceptive” countries, particularly naming Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
This is quite a blow for a country like Venezuela that has sold the same amounts worth of gold to to Turkey in this year alone. While they started with quite a high reserve of gold to sell, which it has been doing to try to right their growing economic crisis, Reuters reports that their reserves have decreased from about 400 tons to only about 175 tons in the last 4 years.
While it might seem strange for one country’s gold to be held elsewhere, apparently it’s quite common for governments from ’emerging-market’ countries to store their gold in the banks of countries with a more developed economy.
So where is the gold now? Reuters soucres were unclear, knowing only that the Bank Of England was seeking to clarify what Venezuela wanted with the approximately 15 tons of gold being held in the bank’s vaults. Their offical source only clarified that plans to move the gold had been held up for nearly 2 months because of insurance difficulties. Both the Bank Of Venezuela and the Bank Of England wouldn’t provide comment to Reuters.
