Free Republic

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez was found guilty Tuesday of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes — including 1-kilogram gold bars — in exchange for using his powerful post to enrich and protect three businessmen and the Egyptian and Qatari governments. Menendez, 70, wearing a blue suit and pink tie, sat with his head bowed at the defense table and kept a poker face while the jury forewoman read the word “guilty” 18 times, for each count that he and his two co-defendants faced. The bombshell verdict was delivered in Manhattan federal court after about 12½ hours of...

It is one thing for tungsten-filled gold bars to appear in the UK, or in Germany: after all out of sight, and across the Atlantic, certainly must mean out of mind, and out of the safe. However, when a 10 ounce 999.9 gold bar bearing the stamp of the reputable Swiss Produits Artistiques Métaux Précieux (PAMP, with owner MTP) and a serial number (serial #038892, likely rehypothecated in at least 10 gold ETFs across the world but that's a different story), mysteriously emerges in the heart of the world's jewerly district located on 47th street in Manhattan, things get real...

Amid international accusations that U.S. officials in the Clinton administration replaced gold in Fort Knox with phony, mostly tungsten bars that were later shipped to China and other places yet unknown, a German refinery has now discovered that it has received a bogus "gold" bar as well. The video proof was shown on the German television station ProSieben that ran the news story covering W.C. Heraeus in Hanau, Germany, the world's largest privately owned refinery. In the story, Wilfried Horner, head of the gold foundry, shows a 500-gram bar (16.0755 troy ounces) received from an unidentified bank. The bar had...