Researcher urges Trump to declassify Nazi war files to trace missing gold

A British researcher who has spent decades tracking Nazi-looted assets has called on President Donald Trump to declassify all remaining U.S. government records related to the Third Reich’s wartime crimes, arguing the documents could help locate missing gold and other valuables still unaccounted for.

Ian Sayer, 80, whose 18-year investigation led to the recovery of two Nazi gold bars in 1996, said greater transparency under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act would enable further discoveries. The two bars, valued at $3.2 million, had been traced to holdings within Germany’s central banking system.

Sayer said he believes additional looted assets — including gems worth millions — remain hidden, drawing comparisons to fictional treasure-hunting figures such as Indiana Jones, portrayed by Harrison Ford.

“I have spent nearly 50 years tracking Nazi war criminals and searching for looted Nazi gold,” Sayer said. “In that time I have learned one thing above all others. The obstacle is hardly ever that the evidence was destroyed. It is that it remains closed."

“I am the last person to have established the location of missing Nazi gold - two bars traced to Germany and finally accounted for.

“The United States searched for those two bars in the years after the war and failed to find them. Detailed investigations were called for and never carried out.

“The reasons have never been explained and I believe the explanation lies in files that are still classified. On the evidence of the last 50 years I am confident that it would pay dividends. Some of those dividends would be paid, at last, to the people who are owed them.”

Sayer, a former truck driver who became an independent investigator in 1978, said he had informed U.S. authorities that two bars of Belgian gold looted by Nazi forces had disappeared from American custody in Munich in 1945.

He said he provided detailed identifying information, including the bar numbers, date of deposit, and bank and account details. However, he added, it took five years and eight months to persuade officials to pursue the matter.

When the U.S. State Department eventually raised the issue with German authorities, the Bundesbank confirmed it held the bars, which were stamped with swastikas. The gold was surrendered in 1996, transferred to the Bank of England’s vaults, and subsequently sold as bullion.

Sayer said the case demonstrated that further undisclosed records could still lead to recoveries and renewed restitution efforts.

By Tamilla Hasanova