One Ton Gold Shipment Into Hong Kong Revealed To Contain Just Worthless Metal

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–  One Ton Gold Shipment Into Hong Kong Revealed To Contain Just Worthless Metal (ZeroHedge, June 6, 2014):

Two years ago, stories of fake tungsten-filled gold coins and bars began to spread; it appears, between the shortage of physical gold (after Asian central bank buying) and the increase in smuggling (courtesy of India’s controls among others) that gold fraud is back on the rise. As SCMP reports, a mainland China businessman, Zhao Jingjun, discovered that HK$270 million of 998kg of gold bars he bought in Ghana had been swapped for non-precious metal bars. What is perhaps even more worrisome, given the probe into commodity-financing deals and the rehypothecation evaporation; these gold bars were shipped to a Chinese warehouse before Zhao was able to confirm the fraud.

As South China Morning Post reports, police were last night making arrangements with a mainland businessman to check whether HK$270 million of gold bullion he bought in Africa was genuine after part of the consignment was swapped with metal bars.

On Wednesday, Zhao Jingjun, 43, opened part of his shipment in front of his buyer in Hong Kong and discovered the gold had been switched for worthless metal.

A senior officer said it would be the city’s biggest heist in a decade if it was confirmed that all the gold had been stolen.

An initial inquiry showed Zhao purchased 998kg of gold bars from a company in Ghana in mid-April, police said.

The consignment, in 14 cases, was escorted by his staff and delivered from Ghana on a chartered flight late last month.

“Officers were told that his employee confirmed the cases contained the gold before it was loaded onto the chartered flight in Ghana,” a police source said.

The source said the employee left Hong Kong after the consignment was handed to the staff of a logistics company at Chek Lap Kok airport. It was then couriered to a Tsuen Wan warehouse.

The businessman arrived from Hebei province on Monday and checked into the Kowloon Shangri-La hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. On Wednesday, he had five of the cases couriered to his buyer’s Hung Hom office.

“When he opened the boxes, he found they were filled with metal bars instead of gold bullion,” the source said. “He told officers the cases appeared to have been tampered with.”

A police investigator said: “We don’t rule out the possibility that the gold bullion may have been switched for metal bars before being delivered to Hong Kong.”

Zhao has reportedly made several such transactions. His business activities include the purchase of iron ore from Australia, Africa and South America.

Four years ago, 265 gold bars were taken from a Yuen Long company. Police arrested three men and recovered most of the HK$90 million in bullion stolen.

We can’t help but feel this is not the last time as commodity-backed financings are unwound en masse and the underlying collateral found missing… sourcing the underlying by any means will be on the rise.

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For those who want to learn more about China and gold, please read “How China Imported A Record $70 Billion In Physical Gold Without Sending The Price Of Gold Soaring

For those curious what a fake 10oz bar looks like, here it is again:

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It appears in thise case, the fraudsters could not even afford Tungsten (or maybe the Tungsten was rehypothecated elsewhere)…

 

4 thoughts on “One Ton Gold Shipment Into Hong Kong Revealed To Contain Just Worthless Metal”

  1. Tampered with? The truth is far more salient, they have been peddling gold far beyond the amount available in the world. I am not surprised China is involved, they lie about everything.
    Look at them. They decided to base their GDP on what they build instead of what they earned; especially once their export market collapsed.
    China made some big mistakes. One was dumping all health care for all people. They adopted the craven methods of the west, and now, if you have money, you can get care, if not, die. There is no safety net of any kind, so many of their people are sick, and disease is on the rise.

    Some of the disease is from breathing horribly polluted air. The lack of environmental protection laws has made their air so bad that the rich are moving in droves to better places, and corporations are leaving for cheaper labor in Vietnam and other places. Having destroyed their environment, the greedy corporations now opt to rape Vietnam, and any other place stupid enough to let them in.

    As a result of this mass exodus, China is losing money….lots of it. They lie about how much they export, and when the nations they claim to have sold X amount of their junk dispute their claims, they ignore them, and continue to lie….a lot like American criminals.

    China also made a big mistake following the FED lead. They have printed money nonstop, far more than their economy generated. They also claimed to have gold to sell, and sent the suckers who bought from them, gold paper certificates……and that is all they will get.

    Someplace I read that if one took all the gold of the world, it would fill up two Olympic sized swimming pools. We had an Olympic pool at our private high school, they are really nice and big, but if that is true, they have been selling gold that never existed.

    If it turns out the bankers are in on this scam, people are going to run for their gold in droves, and banks better have the gold……….If they bought it offshore, I have no sympathy……it won’t be there.

    This problem is indicative of the entire global world problem……they have printed money far in excess of any economic development behind it, and they have sold gold and silver the same way.

    When my dad died, I saw he had bought some silver. I tried to find it……it vanished without a trace…..about $30K worth. That was in 2009. If they did it with silver, they surely did it with gold.

    If the bankers are in on this fraud, people will stop using banks, and they will begin to take their money, and gold claims in for value. They had better have it; if they don’t, nobody will trust them with anything, and we will be seeing a global banking collapse…..thanks to their loss of credibility. Such a thing has not happened in my memory……I have seen it happen to countries, such as Germany after WWI, but never on a global scale.

    I look at my pending demise with mixed feelings. On one level I am sorry to be leaving because the bankers might finally get their’s, and that would be wonderful…….on the other hand, I am going to miss a lot of misery.

    I sure feel for those who have only been following the trite trash on US media, they will not realize the light at the end of the tunnel is really a train…………until it hits them. They will suffer the worst…..God help them. Most people (especially Americans) are like children these days, they have never faced anything like this at all……..

    I remember what my mother told me about the Crash of 1929. She was 15, her father was a senator, and they knew most of the well connected and rich people. In those days, San Francisco ran the state, and my grandfather’s name was a household word. Today, nary a soul remembers who he was……..such is the fleeting quality of fame as Patton put it. She said the folks who jumped out of windows were those people down to their last million, not the people who lost all. Evidently, as she saw it, people who don’t live for money also don’t die for it.

    Hang on to your seats for a hell of a ride, the turbulence is beginning to be felt. Even more to the point, it is greedy guts who are getting stung with this gold fraud……perhaps it will wake up one or two……..but I doubt it. Working folks seldom have the resources to buy gold in such quantity.

    Great story, thanks for covering it. It is not anywhere else…..but I dare say it will hit some of the sites pretty quickly…..its a big story. Greedy guts hate to lose. They will sell their mother for a nickel, but hate to get burned by someone else………without money to flash, they have nothing.

    Reply
  2. More on Hanford in WA state……turning very ugly. Why didn’t they bury these things in concrete when they were finished with them? So much of this makes no sense to me. The Los Alamos Lab is full of really smart engineers, surely they knew what to do……why was it not carried out. Now, WA faces incredible nuclear waste threats, and of course, CA will get it, too.

    http://enenews.com/top-science-journal-time-bombs-at-wipp-nuclear-site-high-alert-over-risk-of-new-explosions-in-350-plutonium-contaminated-drums-ap-4-years-may-be-needed-just-to-seal-off-these-drums-g

    Reply
  3. Great Article, it appears the fraud is totally pervasive I would never have believed it but now I am beginning to thank you for your article

    Reply

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