Evidence emerges of Portuguese role in making Nazi gold vanish

AS THE clamour rises from Jewish organisations for a review of postwar reparations paid by governments which traded in gold looted by the Nazis, Portugal has opened key archives to investigators.

They show that Portugal received over 100 tons of stolen gold in 1940 and in late 1943 and early 1944, although it denied this to Allied investigators and eventually returned less than four tons of it.

The controversy arose in mid January when the US Republican senator, Mr Alfonse D'Amato, released details of formerly classified documents from the Office of Strategic Services (055), the forerunner of the CIA.

They showed that during the war the Nazi government moved vast amounts of gold looted from occupied countries to Swiss bank accounts. Much of it remained with the Swiss banks, but other amounts were "laundered" through third countries, notably Spain and Portugal.

Sen D'Amato said a document marked "top secret official despatch" from US intelligence officers in Switzerland in January 1946 described 250 truck loads of German gold bars - valued between one billion and two billion Swiss francs - being transported from the vaults of the Swiss National Bank in Berne to Spain and Portugal between May 1943 and February 1944.

The Portuguese documents provide confirmation of part of the 1943-44 gold lift but also show that an even larger consignment was moved furtively in late 1940 when around 75 tons was moved from Bank of Portugal accounts in London and Lisbon to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

The 1940 documents are held in the personal archives of the late Portuguese dictator, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, opened to the public in July 1995. They contain thousands of documents, many not yet read by investigators. Other documents are held in Foreign Ministry archives.

Salazar, who came to power in 1928 and ruled Portugal as a one party state until he suffered a stroke in 1968, personally supervised most of the gold transfers according to the newly opened files. In the case of the 1943-44 operation, he co ordinated it with the Nazi government in Berlin.

Although the files show that the Salazar government was involved in a conscious operation to dupe the Allies over the gold - Portugal could be liable for massive new amounts in reparations - the socialist Foreign Minister, Mr Jaime Gama, has adopted a policy of open access for investigators.

A KEY Foreign Ministry file, titled Switzerland and Portugal Movement of Gold to the Bank of Portugal, 1943-44, was initially closed and an Irish Times request to have it declassified was refused.

However, last week Mr Gama overruled a Declassification Board decision, saying journalists should be allowed to read all relevant files about the German gold.

The documents in the Salazar archive include a hand written note from the Portuguese dictator someone enigmatically referred to as "the American banker". Dated December 9th, 1940, it expresses concern about an information leak around the transfer of gold which had taken place over eight weeks ending October 25th, 1940.

He asked the banker to remove from circulation documents concerning the transfer, adding: "We should contact the Bank of Portugal to obtain exact details to orient ourselves as to the measures to be taken."

Salazar's worries stemmed from news leaks in Britain about shipments of Nazi gold out of Lisbon to the US.

On November 22nd, he had been alerted by Mr Antonio Faria, a Portuguese diplomat in London, to stories in the London Evening Standard and the News Chronicle pointing out that Portuguese consignments of gold to New York in October had far exceeded the Bank of Portugal's gold reserves of £9 million. An accompanying document in the Salazar archive, from the Bank of Portugal to Salazar, dated December 18th, sets out the amount sent, $93 million or £23 million.

On December 4th Mr Faria had written another worried cable to Salazar. "This is to inform you that the Minister for Economic Warfare yesterday responded to a parliamentarian's question ... concerning the recent export of gold from Lisbon to the US... according to which Mr Dalton said that gold exports from Lisbon are under strict surveillance. If there is any reason to believe that any consignment is of German origin, he said, the British government will not hesitate to take the necessary measures."

A postscript to the 1940 transfer was provided by cables sent by Salazar in December to his embassies in Washington and London in a further bid to head off leaks. He instructed his ambassadors: "Concerning the press accusations ... you should reply whenever and wherever opportune that it is quite incorrect that gold exported via the Bank of Portugal to the United States belongs to the enemies of Britain".

Some 2 1/2 years later, in July 1943, Salazar was again stage managing an operation to transfer German gold. He was preparing to transport 35 tons overland from Berne to Lisbon.

FIRST indication of the operation appears in the Foreign Ministry document declassified last week. It contains a July 2nd, 1943, memo from the Bank of Portugal to the Foreign Ministry, which reads: "With the agreement of the Portuguese Government, the Bank of Portugal will instruct the Banque Nacional Suisse to transfer part of its gold holdings to Lisbon..."

The dictator quickly swung into action. On July 6th he sent a cipher cable to his ambassadors in Berlin, Madrid, Vichy, France and Berne, requesting each of them to contact authorities in their host countries to inform them of the passage of the gold and obtain guarantees of free transit.

A system was set up whereby the Bank of Portugal notified Salazar as each transport left and he would then notify his Madrid ambassador, Mr Pedro Teotonio Pereira, of the expected arrival time at the Spanish border.

Between August 14th, 1943, and February 2nd, 1944, a truck travelled weekly out of Berne, across the Swiss Alps, through Vichy, France, across the Pyrenees into Spain and to the Portuguese border.

There was an exception, however - the transports stopped for a fortnight in October after disaster almost struck. Although he had squared the scheme with the Germans and Franco, Salazar had ignored the advice of Vichy ambassador, Mr Jose Caeiro da Mata, and had thought that it was enough to inform the Germans in order to travel through occupied France.

On September 19th a truck broke down, leading to an inspection by Vichy officials who discovered the gold. They served a note on the Portuguese embassy, saying it was illegal to transport gold without notifying the Bank of France.

Salazar was apoplectic at this show of independence and cabled Mr Caeiro da Mata. "Knowledge of these transports has been given regularly since August 14", he wrote " - so I don't understand why information is now being demanded of this government. On July 16th, a Berlin Legation had informed us that the German Government had forewarned the competent entities".

At war's end, when the Allies demanded reparation for the looted gold, Salazar stalled. Negotiations stretched on until 1958. Chief negotiators on the Portuguese side were the same men who had been involved in the Berne operation - Mr Pedro Teotonio Pereira, Mr Jose Caeiro da Mata and the former ambassador to Berlin, the Count of Tovar - who claimed innocence of any knowledge of looted gold. If Portugal did have some in its coffers, they said, it had been "bought in good faith, on the open market".

They offered to return less than four tons, although the amounts documented in the 1940 and 1943-44 consignments alone totalled 100 tons.

By the 1950s the political climate had changed. The Cold War had begun and Portugal was seen, not as a dictatorship, but as a reliable anti communist power. The Allies accepted the offer. However, wartime ghosts have not yet been laid to rest.