Balkan gold held in London

Press, 20 October 1981, Page 12

Balkan gold held in London

By KEN COATES, in London

There is gold under the ’ streets of London, about two J tons of it. but it is likely to f stay there for some time. £ The owner of the hoard is ,i Albania, and it is at the ’ heart of Britain’s cool, almost non-existent relation- •? ship with, the fiercely pro- J Stalinist Balkan State. 7 As well as the V2O million worth of gold, British pride is at stake.

Albania insists that the gold, plundered from an Italian bank by the Nazis during World War 11, and brought to London for safe keeping after the fall of Berlin, should be returned without conditions.

Britain will not v do this partly because of claims on it by other countries, and partly because.iAlbania still owes Britain £843,947 in compensation for?-the destruction of two ships in 1946 in the so-called "Corfu incident” in which 40 British sailors died, ...

The wrangle has gone on since 1949 when the International Court at The Hague ruled that Albania should pay up as the ships had been in its territorial waters.

Ironically, while interest piles up on the gold in the vaults of the Bank of England. inflation ravage? Britain’s claim for the destroyed ships which remains at the figure at which it was filed. - *■