OTTAWA–The great Canadian gold heist has turned out to be a $15.3 million combination of bad counting, bad cleaning and sales of gold slag below market value.

Royal Canadian Mint executives will not get their bonus pay for last year after investigations into how millions of dollars' worth of the precious metal was lost revealed it had never gone missing.

Rumours of a sophisticated heist were rampant this summer after an external audit ruled out sloppy bookkeeping as the reason there was 17,500 troy ounces more gold in the mint's 2008 records than was actually found in its inventory.

The Crown corporation released the results of three third-party reviews Monday that management says fully account for the discrepancy. The reviews showed more than $3 million worth of the government-owned gold had been unintentionally sold off as slag – gold by-products – to U.S. refineries while the rest was miscounted and never left the building.

Management at the mint blamed the situation on a volatile gold market that pushed sales of bullion up by 250 per cent. That meant an "extremely busy" year with unprecedented amounts of slag. Officials decided to ship a bunch out for external processing.

"Normal amounts of slag can be safely processed internally, but the large volumes in 2008 created health and safety concerns for employees," management wrote in a summary of the external reviews.

The federal government is nonetheless displeased it cost $1.3 million in audits to uncover the errors.

"Despite the explanations, I am disappointed that errors have occurred," Rob Merrifield, minister of state for transport, said in a statement Monday.

"During this time, I have held the mint accountable by ordering the mint to call in the RCMP, by suspending executive bonuses and by requiring the mint to fully explain this matter. As a result of these findings, executives will not receive any discretionary bonuses for 2008."

One of the reviews discovered the errors meant profits for 2008 were actually $23.8 million – about $7 million less than what was initially reported – and that means about 800 employees were overpaid in performance bonuses for that year. The mint is taking the money back.

Mint management has promised to do better after having learned "some valuable lessons," according to a statement on its website.

It will count its precious metal stock every quarter instead of twice a year and also refine all its slag by-products internally. It has hired a new metal comptroller and additional management staff, implemented a more robust accounting system, is updating how it estimates how much gold is lost during processing and will give staff more time to prepare for the counts.

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Liberal MP Bonnie Crombie (Mississauga-Streetsville), critic for Crown corporations, suggested third-party firms be called in regularly to oversee the counts.

"The good news is there is no theft at the mint. Bad news? It can't count," she said.