How $5 Billion in Physical Gold Was Secretly Moved from London to Poland
The comments below are an edited and abridged synopsis of an article by Tyler Durden
Over the past few months, 8,000 gold bars (100 tons) were transported from the Bank of England’s vaults in London to Poland. One of the biggest movements of gold between global central banks took just eight trips.
On November 22, 2019, four trucks carried gold from a facility northwest of London to a nearby airport. They were accompanied by a police escort and a helicopter. On arrival, 20 wooden boxes full of gold bars bound for Poland were loaded into a Boeing 737 freighter aircraft.
“It was the eighth time we had made the trip, in the middle of the night,” Paul Holt, General Manager of G4Si in Europe (North and South), Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, said. “It was all very secretive, and extremely important it was done well.”
Over the eight trips, G4Si transported 100 tonnes of gold, worth approximately $4.7 billion, from the Bank of England to the Narodowy Bank Polski, Poland’s central bank. On the UK side, the metal was counted, prepared and packaged at a gold storage facility in London before being loaded into high-tech armored trucks.
The gold was in the form of London Good Delivery 12.5kg bars, each stamped with a serial number and a marker identifying the refinery at which they were produced.
When the aircraft landed in Poland, it was met by an elite force of police officers. The gold was loaded into armored vehicles, which were driven to vaults in undisclosed locations.
Earlier this year, Poland’s central bank announced that it would purchase 100 tonnes of gold, bringing its reserves to 228.6 tonnes.
