In an emergency press conference that smelled faintly of gin and desperation, HM Treasury today condemned US sanctions on a Rwandan gold refinery as a direct threat to the supply chains of the City of London. The offending refinery, owned by a man whose name sounds suspiciously like the villain in a forgotten Bond film, has been accused of funnelling gold from conflict zones in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Treasury, apparently enraged that someone else dared to sanction something their gold traders were already laundering, released a statement oozing with diplomatic fury.
'These unilateral measures,' the statement hissed, 'undermine the multilateral rules-based order, and more importantly, they threaten the delicate ecosystem of tax-dodging, status-symbol-peddling, and offshore-account-stuffing that makes London the glittering jewel of global finance.' The City, of course, responded with its usual blend of hysteria and finger-pointing. 'This is a disaster for the gold futures market,' wailed a man in a pinstriped suit who spends his life staring at a screen of meaningless numbers.
'Without Rwandan gold, how will we continue to launder the proceeds of oligarchs and warlords? It's a complete breakdown of civilisation as we know it.' The Treasury's condemnation is particularly rich given that Britain has spent the past few years positioning itself as a global hub for ethical gold trading, which is a bit like claiming to be a centre for ethical glue-sniffing.
The government has even set up a 'Gold Integrity Taskforce' which meets once a month to eat biscuits and nod solemnly before returning to the pub. Meanwhile, the actual gold in question probably has more blood on it than a Shakespearean tragedy. The US sanctions target African Gold Refinery, a facility in Rwanda that has been accused of smelting gold from conflict-ridden areas of the DRC.
The Treasury's complaint seems to boil down to this: 'We had a perfectly good system of laundering this gold through our refineries in London, and now the Americans have gone and ruined it with their pesky sanctions.' In a truly heroic moment of cognitive dissonance, a Treasury source whispered to reporters, 'We must remind our American friends that the City of London operates on a principle of transparency and ethical sourcing. It's just a coincidence that so much conflict gold happens to end up here.
' The source then adjusted his monocle and vanished into a cloud of cigar smoke. The real comedy, of course, is that the sanctions are unlikely to have any real effect. The gold will simply flow through another refinery in another country, perhaps with a slightly different label.
The City will continue to buy it, the Treasury will continue to pretend to regulate it, and the blood diamonds of the 21st century will continue to adorn the necks of celebrities who have no idea where they came from. But at least the Treasury has made its position clear: nobody sanctions London's supply chains without a fight, especially not when those supply chains involve such lovely, shiny, conflict-free gold.
