IMF caught lying to GATA and cooking member bank books on gold

8:31p ET Monday, October 8, 2001

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Maybe the most rewarding thing about GATA is that
people come forward out of nowhere to help. And
sometimes their help is earth-shaking.

That's what happened with our friend Andrew Hepburn,
whose research into the U.S. Treasury Department's
Exchange Stabilization Fund and the International
Monetary Fund has just been chronicled in a series
of dispatches to GATA Chairman Bill Murphy here:

a href=http://www.gata.org/hepburn.htmlhttp://www.gata.org/hepburn.html/a

Through correspondence with the IMF and other
agencies, Hepburn has developed more evidence that
the ESF and IMF are at the center of a deceitful
gold-lending scheme wherein the gold transactions
are misreported to keep them from becoming known
to the nations whose gold reserves are being
depleted and put at risk.

Hepburn's questions for the IMF grew until, its
discomfort palpable, the IMF stopped answering him,
on the grounds that it had many other people to
answer. Somehow I doubt that. But maybe we can make
that assertion come true.

Below is a series of questions for which Hepburn
wanted answers from the IMF before it grew weary of
him. Please consider copying them and attaching
them to a letter describing your concern about
manipulation of the gold market and the compromising
of national gold reserves. Then send your letter off
as an e-mail to the IMF's public relations department
at: PublicAffairs@IMF.org.

Please sign your e-mail with your full name and
postal address and include your telephone number. That
will make it harder for the IMF to discard it.

Then, if you're feeling very ambitious, make a copy
of your e-mail and send it to your elected representative
in your national legislature with a covering note asking
him to help you get the answers from the IMF. Please do
this as a regular postal letter.

And if you get any responses, please let me know
right away.

Thanks as always for your help.

The questions for the IMF are below.

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

* * *

QUESTIONS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
PublicAffairs@IMF.org

1) Has the IMF had any gold-related transactions
(recorded or otherwise) with the Bank for International
Settlements since 1996, and if so, specifically what
transactions occurred and how much gold was involved?
Has IMF gold been deposited with the BIS?

2) Does the IMF deposit its gold with other official
monetary institutions or investment banks, and if so,
what is the size of such deposits and who are the
counterparties?

3) Why have the SDR certificate accounts for the U.S.
Federal Reserve and the Exchange Stabilization Fund
plummeted since 1998? Is the IMF aware of any
transaction or agreement that has caused this
depletion? Is it possible that the SDR Certificates
could have been swapped with another IMF member for
gold? Hypothetically would such a transaction be
permitted under all pertinent IMF regulations?

4) Why does the IMF insist that members record swapped
gold as an asset when a legal change in ownership has
occurred?

5) Since 1994 what dealings has the IMF had with the
U.S. Exchange Stabilization Fund?

6) Since September 2000, approximately 40 tonnes of
gold have left the vaults of the New York Federal
Reserve each month. Is this gold IMF gold, and if not,
is the IMF aware of the country that is responsible for
these outflows?