alt Hacker News> no explanation on what kind of expenses those could be
I think it's pretty obvious the gold was to pay a bribe. The only thing I'm surprised about is the value. That's A LOT of money for a single pay-off or bribe. It seems more than what would conceivably be paid to an individual at once because spy agencies tend to prefer to pay-as-you-go with individuals. Each round of documents, actions or whatever gets a payment.
So I suspect this was intended to either buy a one-time, career-ending action from someone very senior or, more likely, the ongoing cooperation of a company, gang or small nation-state. It's hard to guess but looking over major events in that time frame, Venezuela might be a good bet. The odd part is that the gold was in his house. Aside from the dumb trade craft of keeping it in the very first place anyone would look, why is the gold even in CONUS?
And why gold? Bulk gold is one of the worse ways to transfer that much money. It's big, heavy, and easy to trace until melted down (which is hardly trivial for most people). But the thing I'm stuck on is the places you can walk into and get cash for even one kilo of gold, much less over 300 of them, is extremely limited - and half of them will be under some form of "Know Your Customer" reporting, especially in North America, and the other half might prefer to "Kill Your Customer" and keep the gold. Diamonds, bearer bonds, offshore numbered account, even good old Benjamins seem far better. I think the amount and medium both narrow down the sort of person or entity the intended recipient must be.
One imagines the sort of folks who'd actually prefer to receive payment in that much gold bar all reside overseas where they might control a national bank or have their own precious metals smelting operation. That's why I'm struggling to picture the fake scenario this senior executive used to plausibly convince anyone at the CIA he personally needed to take possession of more gold than several people can comfortably carry and do so in the vicinity of rural Langley, VA. I mean, he can't carry it on any commercial flight and It's not like he's going to schlepp it himself in his family sedan to put it on a secret CIA cargo flight. The CIA has people for that. Also, someone that senior isn't generally doing any direct case officer work. They manage case officers who manage field assets.
So many interesting questions we'll never get answers to.
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> But the thing I'm stuck on is the places you can walk into and get cash for even one kilo of gold
My sister had been hoarding our mother's & grandmothers' jewelry for decades. I finally got her to sell off the gold before another of her bad choices in boyfriends stole the rest (last guy took her for about $40k). We took a check for it, but the guy had most of the $70k in cash at hand. No KYC at all. Here in the US.
Selling gold is still the Wild West.
It’s funny to see how "normal" people talk about 40 million in gold and like a few million in foreign currency.
That’s really nothing in the theatres the CIA operates in. They simply gave it to him and followed up only after the agency’s bureaucrats couldn’t find it during auditing half a year to a year later.
To bribe a nation-state, you’re in the billions. https://www.jfeed.com/middleeast/qatar-iran-bribe-deal
To gain at least some loyalty from a warlord-based Middle East militia, the US was willing to spend 500 million in cash, plus another 200 million in weapons.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-blocks-iraqs-dollar-shipmen...
If you wanted to bribe a high-level drug trafficker, 40 million would get you laughed out of the room or put in a barrel and shipped around for other associates to laugh at.
According to the 2012 annual report of Sos Impresa, the total annual turnover of money by criminal organisations operating in Italy would be valued at €138 billion, with a net profit of €105 billion.
What’s 40 million to someone moving billions in product?
https://unicri.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/UNICRI_Organi...
You’re also wrong about the gold. Gold is easily moved in the hawala system. You give the gold bars to a hawaladar in the US, they give you a piece of paper with a few numbers and you can take it out of the network minus the agreed fees at a different physical location within the network within a few hours in local currency or gold.
https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/AOTP/Hawal...
There is a good example in that report.
Witnesses testified that the trafficker kept track of his drug transactions using relatives who were hawaladars and who recorded the drug transactions and profits in ledgers.
The ledgers were seized and presented as evidence at trial. One ledger, covering the year 2006-2007, contained a series of money transfers linked to opiate and precursor chemical transactions. Another contained financial records of heroin transactions, arranged by a trafficker, covering the period March 2006 to March 2007. Analysis of the ledger determined that the defendant produced and sold over 123,000 kg of heroin, worth more than USD261,000,000: this represented over 19 per cent of the total amount of heroin produced worldwide in 2006, based on UNODC figures.
My bet is he is probably responsible for Middle East-related activities and saw an opportunity in this Iran mess to gain some pocket money while simply squeezing his contacts in the Middle East for whatever favour the CIA needed and keeping the money for himself. Not the first time this happened.
This usually either surfaces because the contact tells someone on a tapped phone that he got his balls squeezed by the CIA and not even got any money for it or when someone in CIA finance says, “Hey Lisa, I need to make this report where the billion for the Iran stuff went and how much we spend and for what and we’re missing six paperclips and 40 million in gold and a few mil in foreign currency. Did someone take it home with them again to make Breaking Bad Ka$h bed photos for their Instagram?”
Even more tantalizing is that it was probably a domestic bribe he was tasked with. Traveling internationally with hundreds of kg of gold is not very reasonable and I'd assume they have access to resources in other countries as needed.
And we'll get all the answer, it'll just take 50 years, and then everything will probably make a lot more sense. Maybe even sooner if an administration finally gets the courage and brains to get rid of the CIA. So incompetently destructive to US interests, and an overall abhorrent organization.