Monday, March 17, 2008
All That Glisters and Stuff of That Nature
There’s a great big oops involved somewhere in this story.
Ethiopia’s national bank has been told to inspect all the gold in its vaults to determine its authenticity.
It follows the discovery that some of the “gold” it had bought for millions of dollars was gold-plated steel.
The first hint that something was wrong reportedly came when the Ethiopian central bank exported a consignment of gold bars to South Africa.
The South Africans sent them back, complaining that they had been sold gilded steel.
None of which makes it easier for me to lay out a Russian language magazine when I have no understanding of the language whatsoever. Just sayin’.
Comments & Trackbacks
Some kleptocrat getting caught, I see.
The first hint should have come when somebody picked up the first bar. Gold has a density of 19.3 grams/cc; Iron has a density of 7.87 g/cc (steel varies with its constituents, but is close to iron). That means that a bar of gold weighs about 2.5 times as much as a bar of steel with the same dimensions.
I don’t need a scale to tell the difference between 20 lbs. and 50 lbs.
Doug, I was thinking the same thing. Robin, I was wondering where the real money from their purchases went, and I was betting that a good chunk of it might have gone into some gov’t official’s pocket when they transferred the “gold”.
This is the perfect story for someone who is happily cynical. It almost needs no comment!
I love it when a plan comes together.
Yep, David, things like gold bars don’t just happen to show up made of steel and no one notice. Someone in Ethiopia cashed out either when the bars in question were bought, or swapped some thereafter but either way, it was not just a janitor with reinforced pockets in his coveralls.