Russian intelligence found gold market info 'very valuable,' FBI says

Russian intelligence found gold market info 'very valuable,' FBI says

1:20a ET Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Russian spies in the United States whose arrest was announced Monday (see http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100629/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_doj_russia_arrests) last year conveyed information about the gold market that the Russian security service considered "very valuable" and forwarded to the Russian finance ministry and ministry of economic development, according to the criminal complaint filed by the FBI with U.S. District Court in New York.

The gold angle in the story was highlighted in reporting Monday night by the Economic Policy Journal, based in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps most interesting for GATA's purposes, the FBI's criminal complaint suggests that the spies obtained the gold market information through "a prominent New York-based financier" who is a political fund raiser and a friend of a U.S. Cabinet member. Would a New York-based financier have valuable information about the gold market if the U.S. government wasn't using New York financial houses for gold market intervention purposes?

The criminal complaint says the Russian spies were under U.S. counterintelligence surveillance for years and suggests that they didn't do much besides pass money around to each other surreptitiously while trying to figure out how to meet important people. That the charges against them are not espionage but only failure to register as foreign agents suggests that they weren't very effective.

But failure to register as a foreign agent is still a federal felony, so maybe the defendants will want to call CPM Group executive Jeffrey M. Christian as an expert witness, as he may be willing to repeat his insistence that, the criminal complaint's reference to the Russian finance ministry notwithstanding, central banks care very little about gold. After all, as an expert witness at the March 25 hearing of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Christian tried very hard to alleviate suspicions about the gold market. How could anything about that market be of international importance?

Economic Policy Journal's report of the charges against the supposed Russian spies can be found here:

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/06/ten-russians-arrested-in-us-as-spies.html

The reference to the gold market and the New York-based financier can be found on Pages 34 and 35 of the second criminal complaint appended to Economic Policy Journal's report.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer