Hong Kong Imported Almost 100 Tonnes of Russian Gold in Seven Months, Nearly Triple a Year Earlier

Hong Kong imported close to 100 tonnes of Russian gold in the first seven months of 2026, a volume the Financial Times reports as a record and roughly three times the same period a year earlier. Russian-language coverage of the same trade data, including an account carried by NEWSru, gives the same figure and frames it as the completion of a rerouting that began when the Group of Seven barred imports of newly mined Russian gold in 2022.

The direction of travel was already visible last year. Hong Kong took 92.1 tonnes from Russia in 2025, a 42 percent increase in volume worth about $10.5 billion, according to Interfax's reading of the territory's customs data. Hong Kong applies no ban on Russian metal, unlike the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, and it took over from Dubai as the main destination once regulators in the United Arab Emirates tightened supervision of unconventional bullion flows. The United States Treasury has sanctioned individual Hong Kong companies for handling Russian gold, but it cannot reach the territory's rules themselves.

Price is doing part of the work. Gold traded near $4,430 an ounce on September 5, according to Kitco, and silver near $67, so the same tonnage is worth far more to Moscow than it was two years ago. Russia's central bank and its miners have a strong incentive to move metal into a market that settles outside Western custody chains, and Chinese buyers, including the People's Bank of China, have an incentive to accumulate reserves that no foreign authority can freeze.

The sanctions were designed to cut Russia's revenue. What they have produced so far is a second bullion market with different plumbing. Gold is the one reserve asset that carries no counterparty, and each tonne that settles in Hong Kong rather than London moves a small piece of price discovery and custody east.