GATA Chairman Bill Murphy''s report on the Durban conference

10:48p ET Sunday, May 13, 2001

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Below is the text of Friday's story about the GATA
African Gold Summit from the Durban, South Africa,
Daily News. You can see a copy of the actual page
from the newspaper here:

a href=http://www.gata.org/durban_press.htmlhttp://www.gata.org/durban_press.ht...

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

* * *

Audacious quest for gold

Bullion price deliberately being suppressed,
claims GATA

A quixotic group of Americans is in Durban
alleging a financial conspiracy it says is
blighting the economies of gold-producing
countries.

By Des Parker
Durban Daily News
May 11, 2001

The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee hit town this
week for the second time in 2001, alleging a
widespread campaign to suppress quot;evidencequot; of a
campaign to depress the gold price and promising
bullion will soon bounce back.

GATA claims that a powerful conspiracy exists to
hold down the price of gold and yesterday they
talked up a storm at the ICC Durban. A four-man
posse led by mild-mannered Texan chairman Bill
Murphy unholstered a veritable arsenal of words
and numbers to garner support for its view that
top US Treasury and Federal Reserve officials, as
well as a quot;cartelquot; of bullion trading banks, have
held the gold price down since 1994.

Now, said GATA member James Turk, the cartel was
having increasing difficulty holding down the
price. quot;It must lose control at some time; it's
inevitable, and then we will see gold return to
where it should be, several hundred and possibly
even thousands of dollars an ounce,quot; he said.
quot;It's a question of when, not if.quot;

Seeking support from an audience including members
of the Zulu royal family, politicians from African
gold-mining countries, unionists, local mining
executives, and executives, GATA speaker Frank
Veneroso queried whether the damage done by a low
gold price could be undone when the price returned
to normal in a few years.

quot;The jobs lost, the economic growth sacrificed,
the dividends not earned... we may never get them
back,quot; Veneroso said.

GATA is behind a US civil action seeking damages
and relief from US government officials and the
banks for gold market manipulation it says exceeds
the legal or constitutional authority of the state
and has done economic damage to companies and
economies of gold-producing countries such as
South Africa. GATA maintains the cartel has fudged
figures to hide quot;hugequot; amounts of gold central
banks have lent to bullion banks, resulting in
discrepancies between actual and reported bullion
volumes held in their vaults.

With probably thousands of tons of the borrowed
gold having been sold by bullion banks for
jewelry, GATA claims the cartel is holding down
the market price so it can buy back bullion bars
to square positions.

Conscious of his audience, Murphy for the second
time this year described the adoption by the
committee of the quot;enveloping horn strategyquot; of
legendary Zulu leader King Shaka. The points of
the horn were political and media inquiry, with
the legal action intended to deliver the coup de
grace in the centre.

However, Veneroso expressed concern at an apparent
quot;spikingquot; by mainstream publications such as the
Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal of
articles reporting the committee's quot;evidence.quot;

quot;Flawed understandingquot; of the gold derivatives
market lay behind the media cold shoulder, he
maintained.