An alleged shipment of unrefined gold dust worth $1.5 million and reported missing from an Air France flight may not have been on the plane, authorities said Friday.
Airline officials said that they have no knowledge of the gold packages from West Africa that were reported missing Thursday after the flight from Paris arrived at O’Hare International Airport.
Instead, investigators found three boxes containing wooden art. Airline officials insist that is what should have been found.
“What we shipped and what was on the air bill were artifacts or handicrafts,” said Air France spokeswoman Diane Cornman, adding that the airline has no record of any gold shipments on that flight.
“We carried exactly what we were contracted to carry,” she said.
Federal investigators acknowledged that it is possible the gold was never aboard the plane, but they are still investigating.
A shipper at O’Hare who was said to be expecting the gold could find no trace of five metal boxes supposedly containing 550 pounds of gold sent from the West African nation of Benin. The shipper, whom authorities declined to identify, called Chicago police, who then alerted the FBI.
“As far as we know, the gold was supposed to be on Air France,” said FBI spokeswoman Mary Lynn Muha. “It was loaded onto the Air France flight–that’s what we were told.”
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The gold was supposedly headed to a refinery in Salt Lake City.
But David McKelbie, manager of one of the leading gold refineries in the western U.S., said a shipment was not expected at his facility, which is in Salt Lake City. McKelbie said his company, Johnson Matthey, is the only gold refiner with international ties in Salt Lake City.
The refinery rarely accepts shipments from Africa. Unrefined gold from that part of the world is usually shipped to South Africa and Europe, he said.
Anyone shipping unrefined gold in large quantities to the U.S. would likely lose money because freight costs would far exceed profits, industry experts say.