Looted Gold
R295.00
Looted Gold explodes the myth of the missing Kruger Millions with startling evidence that exposes for the first time the committed plundering of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) by the political elite over a period of years.
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Looted Gold explodes the myth of the missing Kruger Millions with startling evidence that exposes for the first time the committed plundering of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) by the political elite over a period of years.
The disappearance of the gold that left Pretoria in mid-1900 as President Paul Kruger retreated down the railway line towards Portuguese East Africa is placed in a context not considered in over 100 years. That gold has wrongly become known as the missing Kruger Millions.
No one will ever be able to establish exactly how much gold and other treasure was siphoned out of the ZAR illegally during the turbulent period leading up to the declaration of war in 1899. Without a doubt, the missing treasure amounts to billions of US dollars at today’s values.
For the first time, Looted Gold lays bare the role played by the Eloff family, key figures in Kruger’s extended family. New Zealand combatant Thomas Brown exposed the Eloff complicity in the seizure of illicit gold. His eyewitness accounts are included in his unpublished memoirs and in Looted Gold.
The diligent gathering of scarce information from numerous sources will leave readers with little doubt that dark forces swirled around the tiny ZAR nation, the impacts of which are still felt to this day.
While the unstoppable brute force of British imperialism finally overcame Kruger’s oligarchic rule, other countries adopted a less confrontational and far more circuitous approach to entrenching themselves in the ZAR (and later South African) gold industry.
Many highly relevant questions remain unanswered. Secrets abound. What was the value of illicit funds flowing out of the ZAR to secret bank accounts? Was that accumulation of wealth simply for personal gain or were funds channelled into the achievement of political stratagems? Who continues more than a century later to hide the enormous wealth gained by underhand means during Kruger’s reign?
As late as March 2021 a collection of 910 historical Kruger ponds and half ponds was bought by the South Africa Mint. Will more gold from the Kruger era emerge from hidden vaults in years to come? Who has kept that gold hidden for over a century?
The story that unfolds in Looted Gold will provide you with facts that have not been available until now. History is being rewritten. We invite you to read this book and draw your own conclusions.
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MEDIA REVIEWS
Read the review by Ian Laxton, author and international TV and radio broadcaster.
Co-author Blake Wilkins visited the library to chat with Jarrod Assenheim about the book, Looted Gold. – Listen to Blake and Jarrod’s talk here.
To view the Live-streamed worldwide webinar book launch which took place in Rotorua. New Zealand, click here: Looted Gold – Webinar
Read up on the article published in the SAFREA Chronicle here: https://safreachronicle.co.za/sinister-underbelly-of-missing-kruger-millions-myth-exposed-on-new-website/
Also available as an ebook from leading online retailers
For the Kindle ebook edition on Amazon, click here.
| Weight | 424.90 g |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 22.8 × 15.2 × 2 cm |
| Cover: | Softcover |
| Published By: | Quickfox Publishing |
| Website Address: |
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IAN LAXTON, author and international TV and radio broadcaster –
Numerous books have been written in recent years that deal, broadly, with issues of State Capture, corruption and political intrigue in South Africa.
Indeed, local readers have been saturated with depressing accounts about the capture of their country and the incredible lengths to which the political elite and their cronies will go to accumulate massive wealth without meaningful risk. It seems like a new wave of corruption has suddenly hit our country.
Looted Gold, researched and written by Blake Wilkins and Mike Dwight and published by Quickfox, proves this isn’t true at all. State Capture in SA began many years ago.
The book reveals in startling detail previously unknown facts about the famed “Kruger Millions”, until now not much more than the stuff of legend involving Paul Kruger, the president of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) at the turn of the 20th century, around the time of the Anglo-Boer War.
The authors write in their introduction, “Looted Gold explodes the myth of the missing Kruger Millions with startling evidence that exposes for the first time the committed plundering of the ZAR by the political elite of the time over a number of years.”
They continue: “No one will ever be able to establish exactly how much gold … was siphoned out of the ZAR illegally during the turbulent period leading up to the declaration of war in 1899. Surely billions of dollars in current values.”
The book also details the vast network of “concessions,” in other words licences awarded to friends for them to secure lucrative and monopolistic supply contracts for everything from railways, water and land to dynamite and cyanide.
The web of intrigue extends beyond Kruger himself and the political elite of the ZAR and includes the famed Eloff family and even goes so far as to point fingers at the secretive banking system in Switzerland.
It asks the intriguing question, “Who continues, more than a century later, to hide the enormous wealth gained by underhand means during Kruger’s reign?” Amazingly, the story began in the most unlikely place, New Zealand, when the unpublished memoirs of a Kiwi soldier, fighting alongside the British in South Africa, explain in detail how he witnessed first-hand the secret transfer of large quantities of gold from the home of the Eloff family. These previously unknown, but now fully-authenticated memoirs, handed to Wilkins in New Zealand by Brown’s relative, give startling recorded details about how this gold was moved out of the ZAR into Switzerland as the British were closing in on Kruger.
Three years of painstaking research by the authors (all detailed in the book) present a picture that for the first time explains exactly what happened. It is a fine work of investigative journalism that will surely stand scrutiny by current experts of SA’s history.
Nevertheless, we live in times of fake news and discerning readers and consumers of the media have learned the hard way to dissect what they read in terms of verifiable sources and clear scientific evidence. Reading a book like Looted Gold, which after all took place well over a century ago, cynics would say that it would be easy to “fabricate” evidence and take advantage of a famous legend such as the “missing Kruger millions” and build yet another incredible tale of corruption and intrigue.
To my (cynical and deeply inquisitive) mind, Looted Gold’s authors have gone the extra mile, and then some, to authenticate their story. The research appears to be impeccable and numerous references can easily be verified by suspicious readers. The book is therefore entirely credible.
It goes without saying that the reader will fast-forward 110 years to the present times and come to the sad conclusion that, effectively, State-Capture and the plundering of national treasures by those wielding the levers of power did not start a mere 20 years ago. It goes back way, far earlier than that. “State Capture” in South Africa actually began when Kruger and his merry men decided that personal wealth trumped the needs of the people they were supposed to be governing and the country they were supposed to be building.
Sound familiar?