Gold and beautiful: The shiny yellow metal is more than a piece of an asteroid. It is the hedge against troubled times for nations across the world.

Blitz Bureau

NEW DELHI: Breaking news: Gold across the world is moving. And it is not moving in grams and tolas, but in tonnes. Yes, you heard it right. Gold is being transported in tonnes. By who? By countries, which are bringing back their sovereign reserves, so far parked in overseas safe havens, to their own soil.

The recent geopolitical uncertainties – first the Russia-Ukraine war, tariff tantrums of US President Donald Trump and now the West Asia war – have made countries realise that their hard-earned gold piles are safer home than abroad.

For decades, the “safest” places for a nation to keep its gold were the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank of England in London. These locations were chosen because they sat at the heart of the world’s most liquid gold markets.

If a country needed to sell gold to settle a debt or stabilise its currency, the gold was already there, ready to be “swapped” on the ledger without moving a single bar.

However, the geopolitical landscape has shifted. Between July 2025 and January 2026, the Banque de France completed the final leg of a multi-year journey involving 26 transactions, moving its last 129 tonne of gold from New York back to Paris.

Today, all 2,437 tonne of French gold is stored in La Souterraine, a high-security vault 29 meters underground. The move has also resulted in a massive €12.8 billion (USD 15 billion) capital gain for the central bank. This has helped the bank make a net profit of €8.1 billion for the 2025 financial year after a €7.7 billion net loss recorded in 2024.

France is one of the world’s leading holders of gold and has been storing the precious metal with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since the late 1920s.

According to reports, instead of physically shipping and refining older or non-standard gold, which would have been a logistically complex and costly process, Banque de France decided to sell the New York-held bullion at peak market prices and purchase new, modern international standard bars.

France made this move citing a growing global dollar crisis reminiscent of 1971. It reflects deepening mistrust in the US dollar as a stable reserve currency amid escalating geopolitical tensions.

Financial analysts suggest this repatriation could trigger a domino effect, prompting other nations to secure their physical bullion as a hedge against potential American economic sanctions or currency devaluation as also shifting geopolitical landscapes and economic uncertainty.

India did it too

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has also been executing a quiet but massive repatriation. Between 2024 and late 2025, India moved over 274 tonne of gold back to domestic vaults in Mumbai and Nagpur. As of 2026, over 65 per cent of India’s 880-tonne reserve is now held within its own borders, a stark contrast to a decade ago when the majority sat in London.

Despite the repatriation trend, the Bank of England remains the world’s largest commercial gold custodian, holding around 400,000 bars for various nations. London’s popularity stems from its role as the price-setting center for the global gold market.

Meanwhile, Fort Knox in the US remains the legendary “gold fortress,” holding the bulk of the country’s reserves under intense military guard.

Invisible fortresses

Securing hundreds of billions of dollars in physical metal requires more than just thick doors. The security of these reserves is handled through a combination of physical, structural, and digital layers.

Most vaults, like those in Paris or the New York Fed, are built directly into the bedrock. In New York, the vault is 80 feet below street level, even lower than the subway system.

Unlike a digital bank account, physical gold is a “bearer asset.” If the vault is in your own country, no foreign government can “freeze” it via sanctions. This is the primary driver for Russia and China keeping 100 per cent of their gold at home.

Entering these vaults often requires the simultaneous presence of multiple high-level officials, each holding a different part of the code or a physical key.

Modern vaults use biometric scanners and motion sensors that are completely disconnected from the public internet to prevent hacking.

Why countries hoard gold?

Nations do not build gold reserves to spend it on daily expenses. Instead, it serves three critical purposes:

Currency anchor: In times of hyperinflation, a gold-backed reserve gives a currency “perceived value.”

Geopolitical hedge: Following the freezing of Russian foreign assets in 2022, many nations realized that “paper assets” (like US dollars or bonds) could be rendered useless by a diplomatic spat. Physical gold in a domestic vault cannot be “turned off” by a foreign power.

Liquidity of last resort: If a country’s economy collapses and no one wants its currency, gold can always be used to buy essential imports (oil, food, medicine) because it is globally accepted.

The logistics of moving 100 tonne

Moving gold isn’t as simple as putting it on a truck. When India moved 100 tonne from London in 2024, it was a months-long “special operation.”

First, the gold — usually in 12.5 kg “good delivery” bars — is packed into specialised, tamper-evident steel crates. In the world of high-security logistics, the term tamper-evident is used instead of “tamper-proof” because nothing is really “tamper-proof” if someone has enough time, thermite, or specialised tools.

The goal of international gold transport is to ensure that if a crate is messed with, it is immediately obvious. The crates are typically heavy-duty steel or reinforced polymer containers.

High-security seals (often ISO 17712 certified) are used which include unique serial numbers, RFID chips, and chemical-reactive tapes that change colour if exposed to heat or solvents.

The logic is that if a shipment arrives in Paris from New York and a seal is even slightly scuffed, the entire crate is quarantined, and every single bar is re-weighed and ultrasound-scanned for purity before being accepted.
It is then transported via unmarked, armoured convoys to an airfield. Typically, nations use dedicated cargo planes accompanied by security details, often including elite special forces. To minimise risk, the gold is never moved in a single shipment; it is “split” across multiple flights over weeks.

Upon arrival, the gold is immediately transferred to high-security “underground trains” or armoured trucks to its final destination. Interestingly, the movement is so sensitive that it is often only announced after the gold has safely reached the destination vault to prevent mid-air or transit heists.

Journey to the middle earth

Reaching the high-security underground vaults is no less than what one would expect in a 007 James Bond movie.
The New York Fed: To reach the vault 80 feet below street level, employees and authorised visitors use industrial high-capacity elevators. The vault itself is famous for its door: a 90-tonne steel cylinder that rotates to create a narrow passageway. There are no stairs that provide a direct “break-in” route; the elevator is the primary artery.

Banque de France (Paris): The Souterraine is located 29 meters underground. During its construction in the 1920s, it was designed to be accessed by armoured elevators, but it also features a massive spiral staircase for personnel. Legend says that during WWII, the bank was prepared to flood the vault area to prevent Nazi access.
The Bank of England: Because London is built on soft clay, the vaults are spread across two floors deep underground. Staff move between them using heavy-duty lifts and a network of subterranean corridors that feel more like a clean, well-lit hospital basement than a treasure cave.

When a vault is your office

There are “Vault Custodians” and “Account Managers” who work there every day. Their desks are often located in high-security offices just outside the actual bullion hall.

They spend their days documenting “notional moves” — meaning if Country A sells gold to Country B, these employees physically move the gold bars from one country’s “cage” to another within the same room.
Then there are auditors. At any given time, there are teams of auditors (often from the countries that own the gold) who commute to the vault to perform “spot checks.” They pick random bars, weigh them, and check the fineness stamps against the records.

There is a permanent, 24X7 rotation of armed guards. In the New York Fed, these are specialised Federal Reserve police officers who have their own locker rooms, break areas, and firing ranges — all within the bank complex.
Because gold is heavy, it can actually shift the floor or affect the structural integrity over decades. Engineers and climate-control specialists visit regularly to ensure the air is dry (to prevent the steel cages from rusting) and that the sensors are calibrated.

While the gold just sits there, the human activity around it is constant. For these workers, seeing $500 billion in gold is just “Tuesday.” They walk past stacks of wealth that could buy entire small nations, then head upstairs to grab a coffee and catch the subway home.

The global map

The world’s gold is concentrated in a few specific hubs, though the dominance of the West is slowly being balanced by the “eastern accumulation” led by China, Russia, and India.