SOVIET TREASURE-SHIP

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 330, 16 April 1928, Page 9

SOVIET TREASURE-SHIP

GOLD INGOTS FOR GERMANY RUMOUR OF CHANNEL COUP (United P. A.—By Telegraph — Copyright.) (Australian Press Association) LONDON, Saturday. A story of the alleged transhipment of £1,01)00,000 worth of gold in midChannel has been denied. The Soviet Government some time ago shipped gold Ingots valued at £1,040,000 to America. A French bank claimed the money on the ground that it was the same gold it had deposited in the Russian State Bank in 1915 and 1917. The French Government obtained an injunction in the American Courts preventing the money from beinglanded there, and the gold, was reshipped to Bremen by the North German Lloyd steamer Dresden, due to call at Cherbourg, where it was expected the French authorities would seize the gold. The Russians were said to have chartered a steamer and to have awaited the Dresden six miles off Falmouth, outside territorial waters. They were alleged to have wirelessed a plan of campaign to the Dresden and to have gone alongside her shortly after midnight. ■ The money was said to have then been transhipped without a hitch. Afterwards, with the utmost speed, the Russian steamer was reported to have steamed off to an unknown destination. However, the Paris correspondent of. the “Sunday Express” says the captain of the Dresden cabled from Cherbourg saying the ship was going to Bremen with the gold intact. The captain laughed uproariously at the story of the alleged transhipment of the gold in mid-Channel. He said the gold was part of his cargo and he would not allow the French authorities or anyone else to remove it. He would only relinquish his responsibility for it when it was handed over to the consignee at Bremen.