did not claim that the gold was then in its possession and has since been dismissed. Vatican On October 21, 1946, the U.S. State Department received a top-secret report from U.S. Treasury Agent Emerson Bigelow. The report established that Bigelow received reliable information on the matter from the American Office of Strategic Services or U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command intelligence officials of the U.S. Army. The document, referred to as the "Bigelow Report" (oftentimes as the Bigelow dispatch, or Bigelow memo) was declassified on December 31, 1996, and released in 1997. The report asserted that in 1945, the Vatican had confiscated 350 million Swiss francs ($1.5b 2020) in Nazi gold for "safekeeping," of which 150 million Swiss francs had been impounded by British authorities at the Austro-Swiss border. The report also stated that the balance of the gold was held in one of the Vatican's numbered Swiss bank accounts. Intelligence reports, which corroborated the Bigelow Report, also suggested that more than 200 million Swiss francs, a sum largely in gold coins, were eventually transferred to Vatican City or to the Vatican Bank, with the assistance of Roman Catholic clergy and the Franciscan Order. Such claims, however, are denied by the Vatican Bank. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls stated that "There is no basis in reality to the [Bigelow] report". Portugal During the war, Portugal, with neutral status, was one of the centres of tungsten production and sold to both Allied and Axis powers. Tungsten is a critical metal for armaments, especially for armour-piercing bullets and shells. The German armaments industry was nearly entirely dependent on the supplies from Portugal. During the war, Portugal was the second largest recipient of Nazi gold, after Switzerland. Initially the Nazi trade with Portugal was in hard currency, but in 1941 the Central Bank of Portugal established that much of this was counterfeit and Portuguese leader António de Oliveira Salazar demanded all further payments in gold. In 2000, Jonathan Diaz, a French bus driver, found documents at the Canfranc International railway station that revealed of 'Nazi Gold' had passed through the station. It is estimated that nearly of Nazi gold were laundered through Swiss banks, with only being returned at the end of the war. See also August Frank memorandum Chiemsee Cauldron Confederate gold Gold laundering Lake Toplitz List of missing treasure Montagu Norman, 1st Baron Norman Moscow gold Nazi dental gold Nazi gold train Romanian