The Secret Gold Treaty: the truth behind World War II gold, Nazi plunder and elite plans to control our financial future
David Guyatt
Deep Black Lies, 2000 $23 (U.S.) including p & p from the Deep Black Lies website: http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/
For reasons of economy this has been published on a CD-ROM, but in most other respects it takes the form of a sizable pamphlet with some 53 pages of main text, 21 appendices of varying lengths, and around 90 images and pictures.
David Guyatt, an investment banker turned investigative journalist and researcher, has produced an intriguing if somewhat complex and occasionally impenetrable account of dubious activities in the international gold bullion markets. If nothing else, one has to be impressed by the prodigious amount of research on show. Virtually every statement and claim is backed up by copious footnotes and references, and some of the appendices themselves are substantial essays in their own right.
Many claims are made but Guyatt’s main thesis is that massive amounts of Nazi gold, silver and gemstones were shipped to Argentina at the instigation of Martin Bormann just before the end of the Second World War. A proportion of this was paid over to the Perons by Bormann in exchange for being allowed entry into the country. In 1954, when Israeli intelligence agents seeking out Nazi war criminals became aware of the gold’s existence, it was swiftly transferred to the Philippines.
Why the Philippines was chosen is not exactly clear, but it was also the location of Japanese war plunder hidden there by an organisation known as ‘The Golden Lily’, a covert agency of the Japanese government with its headquarters in Manila. Other substantial amounts of loot found their way to Indonesia.(1)
If Guyatt and his sources are to believed the amount of gold hidden on the Philippines is quite staggering, with just one of the dozens of ‘Golden Lily’ treasure sites being worth c$200 billion in 1945 U.S. dollars. As most of the gold plundered by the Japanese came from the official reserves of China and various south-east Asian states, the question remains – why hasn’t it been returned to the countries it originally belonged to? Guyatt concludes that ‘…some form of “secret treaty” may well have been signed in 1954 that involved the recovery of World War II plunder ….and that a portion of it was subsequently used in U.S. military and intelligence ‘black operations’.’
A secret meeting of 48 nations was held in 1972, formalising this earlier ‘Secret Gold Treaty’.(2) Bullion banks, central banks, and refineries subsequently joined in with this arrangement, forming an unofficial club to police and control the vast quantities of ‘black gold’.
All attempts to legitimately recover the gold under existing ‘treasure trove’ laws appear to have ended in failure. The fate of an Australian broker, Peter Johnston, is dealt with in some detail. Johnston was arrested by the Serious Fraud Squad, tried and jailed for twelve months whilst acting on the behalf of an Indonesian lawyer who was trying to sell a number of gold certificates. Guyatt feels that these certificates were linked to the ‘black gold’ deposits still hidden somewhere in Indonesia and that Johnston was entrapped by the international banking community to prevent the gold from finding its way back into the system.
As Guyatt admits at the beginning of his account, this is very much a ‘perennial work in progress’ and Part Two is already in preparation. The number of startling claims that are put forward combined with descriptions of the intricate relationships involving many of post-war history’s shadier personalities, make it something of a difficult read at times. Any future edition would be helped by the inclusion of a flowchart or diagram clarifying exactly who was doing what with who. If Part Two manages to tie up some of the looser ends evident in this initial account, it will be well worth waiting for.
Notes
- According to Guyatt, this transfer apparently acted as the catalyst for a number of other significant events that occurred in 1954. These included the ‘sudden’ reopening of the London Bullion Market (closed since 1939); the signing of the Treaty of Paris (this ended the occupation of West Germany and established the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany); the first meeting of the Bilderberg Group; an unprecedented and thorough audit of the U.S. gold reserves at Fort Knox; and the establishment of a partnership agreement between the CIA and Mossad. Amounts substantial enough for Indonesian President Sukarno to consider using it as financial backing for the establishment of an international non-aligned bank. One of Guyatt’s sources claims that the idea for the bank was planned in secret at the Bandung Conference of 1955. Sukarno was eventually deposed (with help from the CIA) without the bank ever coming to fruition. The gold, however, remains in Indonesia.
- The Trilateral Commission, an organisation that Guyatt regards as a significant ‘mover and shaker’ in ‘black gold’ circles, was founded the following year.