OTTAWA — The distinct possibility that precious metals may have been stolen from the Royal Canadian Mint is “inexcusable,” the federal minister responsible for the Crown corporation said Monday.
The findings of a long-awaited external audit, released earlier in the day, concluded that $15.3 million in missing gold is not the result of accounting or bookkeeping errors, raising even more questions about the whereabouts of the metals from what has been touted as one of the most secure facilities in Canada.
“The mint’s still unexplained loss of precious metals is inexcusable,” Transport Minister John Baird and Minister of State for Transport Rob Merrifield, whose department is responsible for the mint, said in a joint release. “The mint will be held accountable.”
The Royal Canadian Mint says the precious metals seem to have vanished from its inventory in the 2008 fiscal year, according to the third-party review conducted by Deloitte & Touche LLP.
External auditors have been working since early March to determine whether theft or an accounting error is behind an “unreconciled difference” between the mint’s 2008 financial records and its physical stockpile of gold and other precious metals at its downtown Ottawa headquarters.
The report released Monday concluded that “the unaccounted-for difference in gold does not appear to relate to an accounting error in the reconciliation process, an accounting error in the physical stock count schedules, or an accounting error in the record-keeping of transactions during the year.”
It is not clear at this stage whether any gold is physically missing from the inventory, the corporation said in a release.
via Mint’s $15.3 M golden dilemma: Was there a heist?.
I know it’s around here someplace! And these are supposed to be the best of the government bureaucrats who want to run our lives for us.
Ugh, I liked! So clear and positively.