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Russia to Claim Tsarist Gold from Japan |
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Friday, April 23 2004 @ 08:54 AM EDT
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 The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that Russia wants to start talks with Japan to return $80 billion worth of the last Tsar’s gold. The gold ended up in a Tokyo bank in the chaotic years of the Russian Civil War, which followed WWI and the Revolution of 1917.
The gold was shipped to Japan by a White Army commander, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who fought the Bolsheviks in Siberia. The issue of Czarist gold along with a territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands in the Far East remains a serious stumbling block on the path to warmer relations between Moscow and Tokyo. No further progress has been made since the question of gold sprang up to the top of the negotiating agenda, but recently Russia has made “certain investigations and inquiries to the Japanes side”, Russian Interfax news agency reported, quoting Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko.
The documents which testify that Admiral Kolchak sent at least 22 boxes filled with gold ingots to Japan for storage were revealed by Russia in 1994. Researcher Vladlen Sirotkin, in a widely publicized study said in 2000 that the gold was given to Japan in exchange for weapons, but the White Army commander received no military hardware. Sirotkin estimated that taken into account the interest for the time that the gold has been in Japan, it would now be worth $80 billion. This sum is almost the same as Russia’s total gold and foreign currency reserves and would be enough to pay off two thirds of Russia’s foreign debt.
Interfax agency has said that the gold is now held at Japan’s Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi. However, the sources in the Foreign Ministry admit that a lack of evidence prevents Russia from turning it into a big diplomatic issue. Japan has not officially commented on the matter so far.
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| Authored by: Gold-Investor on Sunday, April 25 2004 @ 11:52 AM EDT |
Official: Russia seeks return of gold
Moscow aims to discuss with Tokyo the return of up to $80 billion worth of gold that Russia's last czar had shipped to Japan during the World War I, but which Japan allegedly failed to return, an official said Thursday.
Russia would like to raise the issue of the missing gold at a meeting of the so-called Council of Wise Men, a group set up to work on the countries' bilateral relations, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko told the Interfax news agency.
In 2000, a professor at the Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy, said that Japan still had gold that Russia sent primarily to buy weapons during World War I, according to Interfax. The Bolshevik Revolution toppled the czar before the war ended and the weapons never arrived.
"It would be quite natural to discuss the gold issue along with other subjects at the Council of Wise Men, which was set up to find efficient ways to radically promote Russian-Japanese relations," Interfax quoted Yakovenko as saying.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 27 2004 @ 11:00 AM EDT |
Russia ups Q1 gold production 13.6%
Russia increased gold production 13.6% year-on-year to 25.012 tonnes in the first quarter of 2004, the Gold Producers' Union told Interfax.
The Union said mine production fell 0.9% to 18.899 tonnes, but byproduct or incidental gold production increased 50% to 3.013 tonnes and recoveries from scrap or secondary production soared 250% to 3.099 tonnes.
Krasnoyarsk was Russia's biggest gold producing region, mining 6.212 tonnes of gold, down 229.7 kg year-on-year.
- Interfax
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 30 2004 @ 04:50 PM EDT |
Japan Says Czarist Gold Long Gone
Japanese Foreign Ministry conducted an independent study of the fate of Czarist gold which was brought into the country in 1916-1920 and announced that currently there are no Russian assets which have to be returned. In the course of investigation the Foreign Ministry studied the archives of Yokohama Siokin bank, predecessor of the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, where the gold is currently held, as the Russian government claims. The investigation team also went through the archives of Defense Ministry of the Imperial Japan and the minutes of parliamentary debates on the issue.
According to the Japanese Foreign Ministry part of the received gold was spent to finance arms deliveries to the Russian Empire and the White Army. The remaining gold was returned to the representatives of the Anti-Bolshevik coalition in the form of gold ingots and money.
Additionally during WWI Czarist government floated a bond issue worth $636 million in today’s equivalent. The money raised from the placement of the bonds was partly spent of purchase of arms. The remaining part was spent by the Japanese government after the Revolution of 1917, because it was unclear who the new owner of the funds is and because the time when the funds could be legally reclaimed has already passed.
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