Wife of Tunisian president fled riot-torn country with 1.5 TONS of Gold

Mail on line ^ | 1/21/11 | David Wilson

[Mikey_1962]

About $60 Million USD

[delapaz]

Kind of silly of them... everyone knows you can’t eat gold.

[reagan_fanatic]

Poor thing - her back must be killing her.

[Vor Lady]

We have missionary friends there; scary.

[spetznaz]

The so called Wikileaks-revolutions are spreading throughout the Arab world. Already Algeria, Yemen, and Jordan are having issues.

[dennisw]

If this was Central Bank gold then Tunisia should demand it back from whatever bank is storing it. Looks like thievery to me

The bad part is it looks like Islamics are taking over this nation

[COBOL2Java]

Dubbed the Tunisian Marie Antoinette, she used to fly luxury foods, including ice cream from St Tropez, to her beachside mansion by private jet while her husband kept a pet tiger, which he fed prime cuts of beef.

Hmmm. This theme sounds eerily familiar...

[mom4melody]

I was just thinking the same thing...

[SampleMan]

Foreign dictators used to keep suitcases of U.S. dollars under their beds, now its gold. A sign of our times.

[agere_contra]

As many Americans are coming to realize: Gold is heavy but very easy to disperse and store. I highly doubt any of this Gold is in a bank.

For reference: a ton of Gold is a cube only ~ 15 inches on a side.

[Hatteras]

Let me guess.... and if I just contact her and send her my bank account number, she will give me 10 million?

[paulycy]

Some forms of portable assets can get you into big trouble.

[Perdogg]

[Blueflag]

Ya might ought to check that math for a decimal place error.

Gold bars are about 7 X 3 5/8 X 1 /34 inches.

That’s about 730 cc (if *I* did the math correctly)

gold’s density is about 19.3 g/cc, so ...

730 cc X 19.3 g/cc divided by 454 g/pound = 31 pounds per gold bar, in round numbers.

That works out to about 96 standard gold bars.

Call that 5 wide by 4 deep and 5 high, minus one row or four.

---

Now for a sanity check, WHAT type of aircraft flew them out of the country.

1.5 tons is a non-trivial freight load.

[2001convSVT]

Excellent reply, I am still laughing.

[Blueflag]

I can only fit about 77 gold bar equivalents into a 15” cube.

Math was never my strong suit, however.

[GeronL]

cha-ching

[Explorer89]

Yeah, the overweight baggage fee is gonna’ be a bitch.