CURRENT RELEASE
CURRENT RELEASE
RUSSIAN GOLD is a fast-paced and gripping fictional thriller of the GREATEST HEIST IN MODERN HISTORY. A robbery that set the stage for murder, suicide, lies, greed, and political power grabs, all in order to create the modern kleptocracy that now runs Russia.
The Bly Island creators watched the dramatic changes in 1991 Russia. They found a series of interconnected events ripe with stories that illustrate Russian politicians’ appetite for power and greed and crushing anything that stood in their way, including our American news reporter and hi innocent Russian friends.
Consider the shock of discovering that over $25 billion vanished from the Russian gold depository after the 1991 coup. A revelation that received one lone New York Times article in November 1991 (Above).
The chaos of Perestroika created deep political turmoil that led to the infamous ’91 attempted KGB coup. Immediately after the coup, scattered news reports showed that billions of dollars in Russian gold were missing. Imagine that $25 billion in missing gold in 1991 would have weighed over 2,000 tons, which begs the question of how much cargo could have vanished and who could have pulled it off.
This graphic novel presents one plausible shocking theory!
Clines, a highly respected NY Times journalist, straddled the line between Russian. Gold’s interpretation of events around the August ’91 coup connected to the gold theft and acknowledged the Russian government's position that there may have been an unlikely slow depletion of the USSR’s gold reserves. What is certain is that vast sums of gold went unaccounted or in Russia, and the empty vaults were surprisingly discovered right after the ’91 coup. Shortly after the coup, the treasurer of the communist party “jumped” from his office window while many other high-ranking politicians were jailed or disappeared. The coup may have provided the cover, and the gold theft may have provided Russian leaders the funding and political platform to transform the country into the oligarchy and kleptocracy of today. Either way, it was undoubtedly the most significant monetary loss in history.
