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The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee was organized in January 1999 to advocate and undertake litigation against illegal collusion to control the price and supply of gold and related financial securities. The committee arose from essays by Bill Murphy, a financial commentator, and by Chris Powell, a newspaper editor in Connecticut, published at Murphy’s Internet site, www.lemetropolecafe.com.
Latest News
By Joshua D. Glawson
Money Metals News Service, Eagle, Idaho
Thursday, February 5, 2026
There is a new viral trend on YouTube and social media of an "Asian Guy" generated by artificial intelligence tools, spreading mostly false or misleading information across the precious metals industry.
At this point you might ask yourself: If it is obviously AI, why are so many people falling for it?
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It likely has to do with people's attention spans and their willingness or ability to research everything they see or hear. And not everything the "Asian Guy" AI bot says is a falsehood. But there is so much fabrication and half-truths peppered throughout.
Some of these AI junk videos have gone viral, leading many to believe that the high viewership must mean they are reliable or authentic.
It's unknown whether "Asian Guy" videos are an intentional misinformation operation or just riddled with AI hallucinations. ...
... For the remainder of the report:
* * *
Support GATA by purchasing
Stuart Englert's "Rigged"
"Rigged" is a concise explanation of government's currency market rigging policy and extensively credits GATA's work exposing it. Ten percent of sales proceeds are contributed to GATA. Buy a copy for $14.99 through Amazon:
* * *
Help keep GATA going:
GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:
To contribute to GATA, please visit:
Donations of $500 or more will entitle the donor to a 1-ounce silver round commemorating GATA's work:
https://www.gata.org/sites/default/files/GATA-silver-round-front.png
By Jan Krikke
Asia Times, Richmond, British Columbia, Canada
Thursday, February 5, 2026
For decades London reigned supreme in the global gold market. Its vast over-the-counter system, built on unallocated accounts, netted trades, and trust in paper claims set benchmarks and kept most bullion circulating as a financial instrument rather than plain physical metal.
Today the London Bullion Market Association's gold price remains the global reference. But London is no longer the primary venue for most physical bullion transactions, as the physical settlement balance shifts from West to East.
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The Shanghai Gold Exchange, working in close tandem with Hong Kong, is the heart of this transformation. Gold that once flowed freely through Western vaults and ledgers is now increasingly delivered, stored, and held in Asia.
In recent years Shanghai has emerged as one of the dominant hubs for the physical delivery and storage of gold. Persistent structural demand illustrates a clear preference for allocated, tangible ownership over leveraged paper exposure. ...
... For the remainder of the report:
https://asiatimes.com/2026/02/golds-center-of-gravity-moving-from-west-to-east/
* * *
Support GATA by purchasing
Stuart Englert's "Rigged"
"Rigged" is a concise explanation of government's currency market rigging policy and extensively credits GATA's work exposing it. Ten percent of sales proceeds are contributed to GATA. Buy a copy for $14.99 through Amazon:
* * *
Help keep GATA going:
GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:
To contribute to GATA, please visit:
Donations of $500 or more will entitle the donor to a 1-ounce silver round commemorating GATA's work:
https://www.gata.org/sites/default/files/GATA-silver-round-front.png
By Alfred Cang and Jin Wu
Bloomberg News
via National Post / Financial Post, Toronto
Thursday, February 5, 2026
A billionaire Chinese trader who made his name riding gold's record-breaking rally has turned his sights to silver's breakneck surge, with a bet on the metal’s collapse now worth almost US$300 million.
Bian Ximing, who avoids the limelight and spends much of his time in Gibraltar, has made nearly US$3 billion from bullish bets on Shanghai Futures Exchange gold contracts since early 2022.
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He has now built the bourse's largest net short position in silver, according to Bloomberg analysis of exchange data and people with knowledge of his investments. They asked not to be named as the information is not public.
Bian's big short comes with significant risk, and he has been forced to liquidate some positions at a loss in a volatile silver market. But he now holds a short that stands at about 450 tonnes of silver, or 30,000 contracts -- so the metal's sharp drop since last week has resulted in a paper gain of about 2 billion yuan (US$288 million). ...
... For the remainder of the report:
https://financialpost.com/investing/china-trader-gold-bets-big-silver
* * *
Support GATA by purchasing
Stuart Englert's "Rigged"
"Rigged" is a concise explanation of government's currency market rigging policy and extensively credits GATA's work exposing it. Ten percent of sales proceeds are contributed to GATA. Buy a copy for $14.99 through Amazon:
* * *
Help keep GATA going:
GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:
To contribute to GATA, please visit:
Donations of $500 or more will entitle the donor to a 1-ounce silver round commemorating GATA's work:
https://www.gata.org/sites/default/files/GATA-silver-round-front.png
By Leslie Hook
Financial Times, London
Thursday, February 5, 2026
Barrick Mining plans to spin out its North American gold mines and is putting its flagship Reko Diq project under review, as the world's third-largest gold miner pushes ahead with a major restructuring effort.
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The company said today it would move forward with preparation for an initial public offering of its North American business, which is expected to take place by the end of the year.
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... For the remainder of the report:
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* * *
Support GATA by purchasing
Stuart Englert's "Rigged"
"Rigged" is a concise explanation of government's currency market rigging policy and extensively credits GATA's work exposing it. Ten percent of sales proceeds are contributed to GATA. Buy a copy for $14.99 through Amazon:
* * *
Help keep GATA going:
GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:
To contribute to GATA, please visit:
Donations of $500 or more will entitle the donor to a 1-ounce silver round commemorating GATA's work:
https://www.gata.org/sites/default/files/GATA-silver-round-front.png
9:19p ET Wednesday, February 4, 2026
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Today's report in Canada's National Post about gold market manipulation --
https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/gold-bugs-right-price-5000-big-bank-theory
-- was remarkable not just in itself, for raising at great length an issue that nearly all mainstream financial news organizations dare not to touch, but for a couple of details within it.
First, the writer, Gabriel Friedman, did something few journalists have ever done with the issue. That is, he attempted actual journalism at the highest level.
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Friedman didn't just report the assertions by Canadian mining entrepreneur Eric Sprott and your secretary/treasurer that central banks and their investment bank agents have been manipulating the gold market.
No -- Friedman sought to put those assertions to the U.S. Federal Reserve for a response. He reported that he got no comment, which, of course, spoke volumes.
Second, the reporter sought comment from a skeptic about gold market manipulation: David Garofalo, chief executive of Gold Royalty Corp. in Vancouver, a mine finance company. Garofalo dismissed gold market manipulation as "conspiracy theory."
But Friedman continued about Garofalo: "But he wouldn't completely write off their theory of bank manipulation, saying he had never actually looked into the matter. 'It's a rabbit hole,' Garofalo said."
This was like so many industry titans who seem to believe that if they don't already know about something, it can't be true -- even if they have never tried to find out.
As the National Post story mentioned, GATA's internet has an extensive archive of what it says are government records confirming longstanding Western government policy of gold price suppression. It's here:
https://www.gata.org/node/20925
If Garofalo ever would like to know what he's talking about, GATA would be glad to invite him to come down the rabbit hole for a two-day guided tour, during which we will examine all the documents, one by one, and request Garofalo's judgment as to whether they are genuine or forgeries and whether they have been misconstrued. If he thinks they're forgeries or have been misconstrued, we'll report it.
Mainstream financial journalists will be welcome to join us, though the documents have been sent to them many times over the years, sometimes even handed to them, face to face, without result.
Light refreshments will be provided.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
[email protected]
* * *
Support GATA by purchasing
Stuart Englert's "Rigged"
"Rigged" is a concise explanation of government's currency market rigging policy and extensively credits GATA's work exposing it. Ten percent of sales proceeds are contributed to GATA. Buy a copy for $14.99 through Amazon:
* * *
Help keep GATA going:
GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:
To contribute to GATA, please visit:
Donations of US$500 or more will entitle the donor to a 1-ounce silver round commemorating GATA's work:
https://www.gata.org/sites/default/files/GATA-silver-round-front.png
By Gabriel Friedman
National Post / Financial Post, Toronto
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/gold-bugs-right-price-5000-big-bank-theory
Gold bugs spent years predicting bullion would hit its present value of around US$5,000 per ounce, but now that their predictions have borne out, some are airing a long-held grievance that it should be trading even higher but for unlawful manipulation by big banks and Western governments.
Others write this off as a nonsense conspiracy theory. But with gold prices swinging wildly -- to their highest ever price in January of US$5,600 per ounce, only to crash 16% in the waning days of the month and then recover back above US$5,000 on Tuesday -- the decades-old debate about what makes the yellow metal rise or fall is rearing its head again.
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"Here's what I say," Eric Sprott, a multibillionaire in Toronto and longtime gold bug, said. "I'm going to call them 'the cartel' -- the major American banks and Canadian ones, too, by the way -- thought gold was kind of their whipping boy; that they could sell it and knock it down."
The banks, he said, manipulated gold futures, which are contracts that allow people to speculate about the gold price at a future date. Such trades can be settled in one of two ways. One is to deliver physical gold on the agreed-upon day; the other is to make a cash payment based on the difference between the contracted price of gold and the spot price on delivery day.
In practice, gold bugs say traders at the big banks figured out a way to game the system. They would short gold or bet on gold futures below the spot price. By executing this strategy at a large scale, they affected market sentiment, and eventually the large number of low-priced gold futures would drag down the spot price of gold.
In that way, the big banks made reams of money and suppressed gold prices in the process.
"It works as long as no one asks for delivery," Sprott said.
That's because if trades were primarily settled through the physical delivery of gold, traders would have to go into the market to buy large quantities of gold, which could drive up the price.
It's more than a theory, too. In 2022, a jury in a federal court in Illinois convicted two former precious metals traders at JPMorgan Chase & Co. of a years-long scheme to manipulate the prices of precious metals, including gold, through deceptive trades of futures on the Commodity Exchange Inc. and New York Mercantile Exchange Inc., both markets considered global benchmarks where the price of gold is set.
"The defendants engaged in thousands of deceptive trading sequences for gold, silver, platinum and palladium futures contracts," a United States Department of Justice press release from 2022 said.
Other traders were convicted of similar schemes by juries in Connecticut and New York, and JP Morgan agreed to pay more than US$920 million as part of a broader deferred prosecution agreement in the U.S.
In 2020 the Bank of Nova Scotia agreed to pay US$60.4 million as part of a deal to resolve U.S. criminal charges connected to a price-manipulation scheme involving precious metal futures.
There were yet more cases against big banks too, but many gold bugs believe those prosecutions hardly stopped the conspiracy.
Chris Powell, a former newspaper editor in Connecticut, said the conspiracy extended beyond gold to other precious metals and was larger in scope because the private commercial banks were also acting as agents for large central banks in the Western Hemisphere.
In 1998 he cofounded the non-profit Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, which is devoted to investigating and exposing "collusion to control the price and supply of gold and related financial instruments."
"We have a very long documentation summary on our internet site, which includes government document after government document showing that there is indeed a Western government conspiracy to keep the price of gold down," Powell said.
But if gold price suppression has been government policy for decades, then why is gold on a bull run? That's where the gold bug's theory begins to dovetail with a more commonly held view of what drives gold prices.
Powell said gold prices are rising only because the U.S. government alienated too many of its allies in recent years, so the big-bank conspiracy idea is falling apart.
After all, the purpose of the conspiracy was to suppress the price of gold and artificially prop up fiat currencies, principally the U.S. dollar, he said.
"The reason gold is going up so far in recent years is all the countries used to be united on gold policy," he said. "Gold is the only alternative to the dollar and the central banks are no longer united on letting the U.S. rule the world."
The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank declined to comment.
In some ways Powell's ideas are not so different from some of the more mainstream views about what is driving gold prices.
For example, the World Gold Council has said central banks increased their annual purchases of gold after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Russia subsequently faced sanctions from a variety of countries, which were enacted by freezing its assets, many of which were denominated in U.S. dollars. Greater central bank buying of gold has largely been viewed as an effort to find an alternative to the U.S. dollar in their foreign-exchange reserves.
Pretty much all parties agree there are multiple reasons for gold's rise, including increased gold purchases by investors concerned about inflation or geopolitical risk.
Even those in the mining industry who shun the term "gold bug" agree with some of what the gold bugs are saying.
David Garofalo, chief executive of Vancouver-based Gold Royalty Corp., which helps finance precious metal mines in exchange for future revenue streams or a share of the production, said his undergraduate training in economics means he's "not religious about any metal," but he believes central banks are "debasing" fiat currencies through the excessive creation of money in order to lower the real value of their debt.
That will naturally drive investment in gold because, unlike fiat currency, there is a finite supply of gold in the world, he said. He pointed to gold's steady increase in value to US$5,000 per ounce from about US$200 in the mid-1970s.
Still, he called Sprott and Powell's idea that banks are manipulating gold futures a "conspiracy theory."
"We can agree that the gold price should be higher based on the fundamentals of monetary supply," he said.
But he wouldn't completely write off their theory of bank manipulation, saying he had never actually looked into the matter.
"It's a rabbit hole," Garofalo said.
* * *
Support GATA by purchasing
Stuart Englert's "Rigged"
"Rigged" is a concise explanation of government's currency market rigging policy and extensively credits GATA's work exposing it. Ten percent of sales proceeds are contributed to GATA. Buy a copy for $14.99 through Amazon:
* * *
Help keep GATA going:
GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:
To contribute to GATA, please visit:
Donations of $500 or more will entitle the donor to a 1-ounce silver round commemorating GATA's work:
https://www.gata.org/sites/default/files/GATA-silver-round-front.png
8:13p ET Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Following what seems like the attempt on January 29 by the U.S. government, supported by the Federal Reserve and major investment banks, to enable large short positions in gold futures and especially silver futures to be more easily covered on the New York Commodities Exchange, it should be emphasized again that since 2009 the most contemporaneous proof of surreptitious central bank intervention in the gold market has come from the use of gold swaps arranged by the Bank for International Settlements.
GATA's consultant about the BIS, Robert Lambourne, reports that the December 2025 statement of account for the BIS was published yesterday afternoon --
https://www.bis.org/banking/balsheet/statofacc251231.pdf
-- and again it confirmed that surreptitious official activity in gold was enabled via BIS gold swaps.
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These swaps long have been accurately estimated by Lambourne from the BIS' monthly statements. His estimates have been confirmed by the bank's annual reports.
Lambourne calculates from the bank's December 2025 statement that BIS gold swaps rose by 17 tonnes during the month, from 39 in November to 56 in December.
The bank has never challenged Lambourne's calculations. Indeed, no one has.
The bank has also refused to explain publicly the objectives of its gold swaps and to identify their participants.
While the BIS never provides enough information to identify the parties to its swap transactions, it's likely that the gold involved is held by a commercial bullion bank (probably as a custodian of a gold exchange-traded fund) and is swapped for dollars via the BIS on behalf of the Federal Reserve.
The only time the BIS offered any explanation of the swaps was in an interview given to the Financial Times in 2010 by its general manager, Jaime Caruana:
https://www.ft.com/content/3e659ed0-9b39-11df-baaf-00144feab49a
Of course much has changed in the gold and currency markets since then.
This table shows the tonnage of BIS gold swaps for each month-end as estimated by GATA since December 2024:
Dec 2025: 56
Nov 2025: 39
Oct 2025: 54
Sep 2025: 54
Aug 2025: 30
Jul 2025: 34
Jun 2025: 34
May 2025: 32
Apr 2025: 5
Mar 2025: 10
Feb 2025: 22
Jan 2025: 16
Dec 2024: 78
For years now the BIS gold swaps have indicated that Western central bank policy on gold has been changing dramatically.
That is, four years ago, in February 2021, Lambourne showed that the BIS had undertaken 552 tonnes in gold swaps. Since then the volume of BIS gold swaps has declined by 90%.
The decline in the BIS' gold swaps has coincided with a steady rise in the gold price, as well as with JPMorganChase's becoming a joint custodian of the exchange-traded fund GLD. Presumably GLD metal is now available via JPMorganChase for surreptitious application to emergencies caused by high demand for gold.
JPMorganChase has a record of surreptitiously trading in the gold market on behalf of central banks. As Bloomberg News reported about the bank in 2022 in connection with the conviction of its traders who spoofed the gold market:
"Another set of important clients were central banks, which trade gold for their reserves and are among the biggest players in the bullion market. At least 10 central banks held their metal in vaults run by JPMorgan in 2010, according to documents disclosed in court."
Along with recent announcements by certain central banks of gold acquisitions, all this has created a growing impression among market observers that something very big has been going on behind the scenes with gold.
Eventually maybe people in the West will see gold's resurrection, the debasement of their government currencies, and the refusal of their governments to acknowledge and explain their market interventions as evidence that their countries are not as democratic as are imagined to be.
Because of GATA and a few other independent researchers and analysts, nearly everyone seriously involved with gold and silver knows now that Western governments particularly long have waged a largely secret war against the monetary metals, a war that is also aimed against their own people, a war whose documentation has been compiled and summarized by GATA here:
GATA's surveillance of the BIS keeps discerning the crucial signs that Western governments are retreating from gold price suppression -- and that gold, the ancient defender of individual liberty, is starting to win.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
[email protected]
* * *
Support GATA by purchasing
Stuart Englert's "Rigged"
"Rigged" is a concise explanation of government's currency market rigging policy and extensively credits GATA's work exposing it. Ten percent of sales proceeds are contributed to GATA. Buy a copy for $14.99 through Amazon:
* * *
Help keep GATA going:
GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:
To contribute to GATA, please visit:
Donations of $500 or more will entitle the donor to a 1-ounce silver round commemorating GATA's work:
https://www.gata.org/sites/default/files/GATA-silver-round-front.png
By He Huifeng
South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Following the sudden demise of a major gold trading platform in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, another retail-focused operator has suffered a run, stoking fears of contagion in China's private market for the precious metal.
The platform, Ydd007, is the latest to face trouble. On Sunday it told investors that it had experienced three "severe runs" in recent days amid mounting industry panic. It also acknowledged a significant funding shortfall, according to Chengdu.cn, part of the Chengdu municipal government's media office.
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Since Saturday investors from Guizhou, Jiangxi, and other provinces have travelled to Ydd007's office in Shenzhen's Shuibei -- widely regarded as the heart of China's private gold trade -- to demand immediate payouts, the report said. The incident came right after a redemption crisis at Shuibei's JWR, an online metals trading platform.
The turmoil coincided with global volatility in gold and silver prices. Both suffered a historic selloff last week, with the gold price plunging nearly 10% Friday -- the biggest single-day decline in decades -- before partially recovering today.
On Wednesday authorities in Shenzhen's Luohu district announced that a task force would investigate abnormal business operations at JWR, where unpaid funds could exceed 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion), based on investor estimates reported by mainland media outlets.
Shuibei is home to a large share of the country's wholesale, processing, and pricing activity for gold, and its stability has long been regarded as a barometer for the domestic industry.
Ydd007's trading model closely mirrors JWR's, offering high-leverage "virtual gold" trades with low margin deposits. The company stated that it had previously managed risks by hedging on other platforms, including JWR, but faced severe cash flow pressure after those channels were blocked, Chengdu.cn reported.
Similar platforms operate in a grey area between physical gold trading and financial derivatives, fueling concerns on social media. Several privately run online platforms have been suspended since JWR's crisis, Chinese media outlet Jiemian reported.
"It's far more than just these two platforms -- many people on social media have shared similar experiences," one user posted on RedNote, adding that gold bought on another platform in October last year was also facing withdrawal difficulties.
Legal experts cautioned that the impact of such risks on households should not be underestimated. "Recent sharp declines in precious metals like gold have affected numerous retail investors and their families, with some even facing debt pressures," said Guangzhou-based lawyer Deng Ping.
Chinese authorities had previously warned retail investors about the risks of chasing the recent gold rally.
In October, the Shenzhen Gold and Jewelery Association issued an alert, noting that several local suppliers -- posing as legitimate gold traders -- were in fact running "non-physical gold betting" through online platforms.
Authorities suspected these operations amounted to illegal gambling, according to the notice.
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