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| King Zog I and a paper published by Albanian Public Archives pretending of how much gold he stole |
Gold has a material value and a mystical value and the latter serves well for propaganda. The value of gold today is significantly lower than it has been historically because since the 1970s, the world began to use fiat money, which left gold as a valuable decorative material but without a monetary role.
Recently, the Albanian State Archives published on its Facebook page a document in which it is written that the former king Ahmet Zogu, at the time of his departure from Albania in 1939, had with him an amount of 250 thousand gold napoleons. The document was drawn up by an official of the time, who refers to "security sources" to report that according to his information, the Greek side had found so much money in Zog's wallet at the time he crossed into Greece to escape from Fascist Italy that landed in Albania.
Leaving aside the question of how reliable this source of information is, the question is how we can make sense of the figure of 250 thousand Napoleons.
The Napoleon is a gold coin with a weight of 6.42 grams and a purity of 900 per thousand or 21.6 carats. Napoleon has been the base currency of a number of countries that were part of an alliance known as the Latin Monetary Union, where France, Italy, Belgium, and other countries participated. This means that all 250,000 napoleons were equal to nearly 1,450 kilograms of gold, which in the international market today costs approximately 80 million euros.
The comparison with today does not help much because gold at that time was the base currency and therefore very important and precious, while today gold is mostly material for jewelry and is not so precious anymore.
Napoleon is actually a popular nickname. The official name of this coin was 20 francs, or 20 lire. So one napoleon was equal to 20 francs or 20 lire.
The franc was the currency of tax receipts and budget expenditures in the pre-war Albanian state until the 1950s. For example, the state budget for the fiscal year 1937-'38 provided for revenues and expenditures in the amount of 26 million francs. If we assume that Zogu took with him 250,000 Napoleons, or 5 million francs, this means that at the time of his departure, he had approximately 20% of the country's annual budget.
If we transpose this to today's situation, where the budget income is approximately 5 billion euros per year, then today's king had to leave with approximately 1 billion euros with him to be able to compete with Zogu.
Zogu ruled Albania from 1925 to 1939, approximately 13 years, equal to half of Berisha's term and Rama's full term or vice versa, Berisha's full term and half of Rama's term.
During the last thirteen years, the Albanian state budget has had a total income of nearly 44 billion euros. If Albania had been ruled by a king, for that king to ultimately make as much money as Zogu supposedly took with him, then he would have had to appropriate approximately 2.3% of all income. Given the level of corruption in the country, this does not seem too unlikely.
Zogu governed Albania as a dictator, (he claimed to be an enlightened dictator) and gave numerous concessions to foreign companies, in mining, but also in central banking. Çatin Saraçi, a former official, claims in his memoirs that the tip paid for the concession of the National Bank of Albania was 2 million francs, a figure equal to 100 thousand gold napoleons. Whether or not Saraci's claim is true, the fact is that the central bank concession turned out to be an extremely profitable investment for the concessionaires. Profits for 1938 alone were nearly 1.1 million gold francs.
As for the repeated accusation of communism that Zogu "stole the treasure", this is probably untrue. The National Bank of Albania was at this time under the direct ownership of the Italian government. The bank's headquarters were in Rome. Its executive board was in Rome.
The monetary gold, i.e. the "treasure" of the bank, was kept in Rome and therefore, it was unlikely to be found in Tirana to be stolen by Zogu. Moreover, it is known that the monetary gold, which was a total of 2334 kilograms, was taken by the German army from Rome and then by the British army from Germany after the Second World War. If the treasure was taken this way, could it be stolen by the King?
Moreover, the very concept that "stole the treasure" and ran away seems like it doesn't hold. If the Albanian government had treasure in 1939 and the country was being invaded by a hostile power, it was logical for the treasure to be moved with the government instead of being left in the hands of the conqueror. Here we must point out that the communist regime took and stole from the Albanian people and citizens of that time by violence and murder, much more gold and napoleons of gold than King Zog.
The National Bank of Albania (NBA) was confiscated by the communist regime in 1945. But in the hands of the new communist government were only the banknotes in circulation, the NBA buildings, and what could be found in the bank's coffers. The bank's central offices in Rome were not accessible to the Albanian government. The bank's central offices in Rome were not accessible to the Albanian communist government. The National Bank of Albania as an Italian economic entity, under the almost complete ownership of the Italian government, continued its activity until 1957 when it was liquidated. Its assets at that time, about 1 billion lire, were transferred to the Ministry of Finance of Italy.