Discreet Transparency

Building upon the ambiguous status of gold as both a monetary asset and a commodity, this chapter interrogates the plural veridictions that support industry claims to responsible business conduct. Through a chronicle of the political and legal struggles surrounding the “true” provenance of gold imported to Switzerland, it suggests that responsibility claims rely on a regime of discrete transparency. Transparency practices in the gold trade are both discreet in their efforts to preserve the secrecy of business operations, and discrete in the legal processes through which they separate normative orders to establish different veridictions on the “true” provenance and ownership of gold. Rather than opposing notions of transparency and secrecy, these veridictions seek to assemble the values associated with both terms. Challenging these veridictions supposes a disentanglement of gold from its status either as money or as commodity, and a shift from an ontology of individuals-as-consumers to one of individuals-as-citizens. A third veridiction emerges once imported gold is considered part of a stream of information owned by the sovereign rather than in terms of its relation to a consumer.