Mint changes its gold count

[daleo]

The Royal Canadian Mint is changing the way it keeps track of its gold after losing some $15-million worth of the precious metal earlier this year - only to find out it was never really lost at all.

The Mint released the results of third-party reviews on Monday that its officials say fully account for the discrepancy of 17,500 ounces between the amount of gold in its records and the amount it had on hand.

They said in a statement on Monday the Crown Corporation has learned “some valuable lessons” from the ordeal.
...
In the end, the “loss” was attributed to accounting errors and an underestimate of the amount of metal that is lost during processing.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/bureau-blog/mint-changes-its-gold-count/article1407771/
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The phrase "yeah, right" comes to mind.

[HeresyLives]

1. This sounds more than a little fishy.

But then so have all their other stories.

[daleo]

2. Here is a key point in today's Globe article

The Mint admitted it underestimated the gold content in the by-product left after its refining process. As a result, millions of dollars worth of gold were miscounted or sold off to U.S. processors as slag at a fraction of its value.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/miscalculations-responsible-for-missing-gold/article1408390/

This is very vague. Had they been doing things this way for decades or just the recent past? How exactly could the national mint not understand the chemistry of gold refining? Which U.S. firms got the slag and did they recover the gold? Did anyone in the mint profit by the sale?

These are the kinds of questions an investigation ought to answer. As you say, this report is fishy. We deserve to know more.

[HeresyLives]

3. Well they sure need to pull up their sox!

This is unbelievably sloppy. And I stress the 'unbelievably.'

[Tindalos]

4. The whole story is highly questionable

Either someone was grossly incompetent or there is something very strange going on at the mint. Maybe someone forgot to adjust for the rising price of gold?


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