For those of you who are obsessed with gold accounting -- and there are a lot of you; rumors about improper counting of gold bars in Ft. Knox are legion -- a fresh report from the Royal Canadian Mint about how it miscounted .3% of its gold, and lost $20 million should be interesting.

The Times Colonist (via JohnLothian.com): A series of miscalculations and blunders in the mint's gold refinery dating back to 2005 were responsible for 17,500 troy ounces — a system of weights for precious metals — of gold going missing from the mint's Ottawa inventory count last October, the mint announced in a 12-page report.

That's the equivalent of almost 44,400-ounce bars, worth more than $20 million in today's prices.

The mint said a 14-month hunt to find out what happened to the precious metal now "fully accounts" for the missing gold, though it admits almost 3,500 ounces unwittingly sold off in slag to U.S. re-refiners will never be recovered.

The mint blames the situation on an explosion in the demand for gold in 2008, which pushed sales up by 250 per cent and placed a huge strain on its gold refinery, one of the largest in the world.

Read the whole report below:



Management Report Final Eng -