Gold Steady Around $1319

Gold was little changed early in Asian trading on Friday but looked likely to fall as concerns grew over weak physical demand and discovery of $15 billion of loans tied to falsified gold deals in top consumer China.

Spot gold was flat at $1,316.54 an ounce by 0029 GMT, after losing 0.1 percent in the previous session.  Chinese gold processing firms have since 2012 used falsified gold transactions to borrow 94.4 billion yuan ($15.2 billion) from banks, the country’s chief auditor said.

Most commodity-financing deals are legitimate, but revelations of borrowing based on fake transactions in the gold market by the national auditor, which comes on the heels of alleged metals financing fraud at Qingdao Port, may prompt authorities to launch another crackdown on commodity financing.

CNBC

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