The two things that are clear and announced by the new government for now:
• What is on the ocean floor will definitly be salvaged
• Colombia claims the total of it and will not split with Spain or anybody else who pretends a “legal claim”.
Nothing what Team Santos has done and promised, is valid, everything is under new negociation, but nothing has been taken from the table and ruled out for good either. (Except the claims of third parties like Sea Search, Spain, and UN buerocrats )
At this time it seems unlikley that the salvage contractors will be paid with actual gold coins from the wreck due to the “optics of it” and “what the press can make out of it”…
Colombia has actually the best example how this can be handled. It is the gold museum in Bogota. The museum is designed like a Bank Vault you can visit it and enter that vault where the Gold of the Americas - or what is left of it - is on display like in a Museum, but it is also a back up for the Colombian Currency - kind of like Fort Knox. So the gold is used in both ways as Museum and in Financial terms at the same time. Its “theorical ownership” is shared by the financial institutions that own Colombian Debth but it is still on display in Bogota and can not be moved from there nor be melted. So its “archeological value” is “owned by humanity” and made available to visit. It is a form to “eat a cake and have it on display too”.
In much the same way the gold from the san jose can stay in Cartagena in a special museum and the contractors be paid with it without handing it over and dispersing it over the planet .... what is the part the archeologists and the public claim.
Media Spin has become a central aspekt of this project - as we predicted from the very beginning.
It is key to seperate the value of the treasure to make it useable and leave the treasure in the museum - where it belongs - a good bank can handle this kind of contracts with a government.
Even if it sits in the Museum it can still be used as a kind of “collateral” in financial terms
Colateral . El colateral es un activo que sirve como garantía frente a la concesión de un crédito, una emisión de bonos o cualquier otra operación financiera .
