Russia’s lost Gold
Tsar Nicholas II
A Gold Rush is set to hit Russia after claims that a huge treasure trove dating form the time of the last Tsar Nicholas II, with possible British claimants, remains buried in remote woodland near the City of KAZAN. Historian Valery Kurnosov says evidence of the hoard, estimated to be worth about half a billion pounds at today’s prices, lies in the files of both the KGB and MI6.
He has also unearthed documents showing that Stalin and Khrushchev both sought to get their hands on the loot but failed.
By rights, the haul, estimated to weigh 17 tons or more, belongs to descendants of its owners, nominally a tsarist financial institution with emigré and British investors. Many may have no inkling they could claim.
Mr Kurnosov has urged the Russian government to organise a search, putting his faith in old maps and modern technology.
The story of the Kazan gold has long intrigued the intelligence services of Russia and the West, despite claims that it was long ago raided.
“I am convinced the gold is still buried in its original location and can be extracted,” said researcher Ravil Ibragimov, 55, who heard stories as a Soviet child of its burial near his village of Astrakhanka. ”
“There is not a scrap of evidence that it was taken out of the ground by the Bolsheviks or anyone else.”
“There is always interest in shipwrecks but this is bigger than anything at the bottom of the ocean.” Gold was secreted in Kazan as Russia descended into revolution during the First World War. British agents were involved in the removal of tsarist treasures from the then capital Petrograd (now St Petersburg) to Kazan, east of Moscow for safe-keeping from Bolshevik forces.
In the months before July 1918, when abdicated autocrat Nicholas II and his family were shot on Lenin’s orders, it is estimated that 73 per cent of the world’s largest gold reserves were held in this Tatar city.
Extract from an article in the Sunday Express