Nazi Gold & The Vatican Bank

Nazi Gold

The present whereabouts of the Nazi gold that disappeared into European banking institutions in 1945 has been the subject of several books, conspiracy theories, and a civil suit brought in 2001 against the Vatican Bank, the Franciscan Order and other defendants.

That the Nazi regime maintained a policy of looting the assets of its victims to finance its war, collecting the looted assets in central depositories, and that it occasionally transferred gold to banks outside the Third Reich in return for currency, have been well documented since the 1950s. The identity of individual collaborative institutions and the precise extent of transactions is more open to denial, however.

Among Nazi puppet regimes, the Ustasha regime also maintained concentration camps and confiscated the assets of its victims in the campaign of ethnic cleansing to clear 'Greater Croatia' of Serbs, Roma, and Jews. Victims' assets were deposited in the Ustasha Treasury. In 1948, U.S. Army Intelligence reports confirmed that 2,400 kilos of Ustasha stolen gold were moved from the Vatican to one of the Vatican's numbered Swiss bank accounts.

At the time of the collapse of the Ustasha in 1945, Ustasha agents were found at the British-occupied Austro-Swiss border with gold valued at 350 million Swiss francs. Intelligence reports also suggest that more than 200 million Swiss francs were eventually transferred to Vatican City and the IOR with the assistance of Roman Catholic clergy and the Franciscan Order. Such claims are denied by the Vatican Bank.

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