Its vaults hold about 40 percent of the world's monetary gold.

The order criminalized the possession of monetary gold by any individual, partnership, association or corporation.

Whether the IMF borrows or not, monetary gold can be used in another way.

As a result, monetary gold spread very quickly from Asia Minor, where it first gained wide usage, to the entire world.

The depository also holds monetary gold coins.

But the report for the first time establishes that this gold was mingled with the "monetary gold" deposited in Swiss banks.

The Federal Reserve records prove, though, that at least some of the gold returned to Europe was not "monetary gold."

Recognized claims against the monetary gold pool greatly exceeded the amount of monetary gold actually recovered.

Hundreds of millions of francs worth of this gold was monetary gold plundered from the central banks of occupied countries.

Much of that gold, the United States argues, was smelted into "monetary gold" that was stolen from central banks around Europe.

"If any monetary gold was mixed with nonmonetary gold, it is impossible to say how much that might have been," said Francis Richards, the British representative at the conference.

Ronald Wingate (1889-1978), British colonial administrator, soldier, delegate on the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold and author.

THE $2.7 billion was put in the hands of an American, British and French panel, the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold.

Throughout the life of the commission, it has operated under the assumption that all the gold in its hands was so-called monetary gold that had come from the national reserves of central banks.

"There are accounts from the Nuremberg trials, from the National Archives, from eyewitnesses and survivors of the camps that private gold was mixed with the so-called monetary gold.

After the war, both Italy and Albania claimed that this gold was theirs, and that the Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold should return it to them.

After some hesitation, France joined the United States and Britain - the other members of the commission - in pledging money to a relief fund for individual victims who might have claims on the monetary gold.

It also concluded that so-called "monetary gold" - gold stolen from central banks - had been intermingled with "non-monetary gold," or gold taken from individuals, in some cases the tooth fillings of Holocaust victims.

In March 1933 President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 criminalizing the possession of monetary gold by any individual, partnership, association or corporation and Congress passed a similar resolution in June of 1933.

The groups say Switzerland profited from trading in both monetary gold - the bullion held by central banks - and nonmonetary gold - gold assets held by individuals in the form of jewelry or coins.

American officials, citing today's finding that some of the so-called monetary gold was in fact looted from Holocaust victims, say it should be put into a compensation fund for Holocaust survivors and the heirs of victims.

Under the Washington Agreement, Swiss negotiators agreed to transfer approximately 250 million Swiss francs ($58.1 million) of gold into the Tripartite Gold Commission's (TGC) monetary gold pool.

After the war, Wingate served on the British delegation to the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold and in 1947, he became the British delegate on the Commission.