“Communist Party gold didn’t exist”

23 Sep, 2009 06:02 / Updated 15 years ago

The gold of the Communist Party is a myth, says the ex-chairman of the Russian and USSR Central Bank, Viktor Gerashchenko.

“This is a far-fetched thing – the gold reserves of the party. The party didn’t have any gold. The party had huge incomes from membership fees, and it was only in rubles.”

The Communist Party had access to the foreign currency deposit run by the Ministry of Finance – which meant that the party could purchase a certain amount of foreign currency per year. The allowed amount was not very much – 10 to 15 million dollars. These funds were usually used to provide help to other communist parties, especially in countries where they experienced problems and pressure from the governing regime, in particular to fund their print media,” he told RT.