May 6, 2011 - 18:53 AMT
Lawsiut against U.S. Federal Reserve over assets seized during Genocide continues

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by an Armenian group seeking to force the disclosure of information on gold and other assets seized by the Turkish government in 1915.

The assets, according to the center’s lawsuit, totaled about five million British pounds at the time and were deposited by the Turkish government in Germany’s Reichsbank. They were taken by the U.S. and other Allied powers at the end of World War I under the Treaty of Versailles, the center said.

The nonprofit Center for Armenian Remembrance, based in Glendale, California, sued the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in March, saying Armenian assets called “Turkish gold” were seized during the Armenian Genocide.

The group said it filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Reserve in June. The agency said it couldn’t locate any information and forwarded the request to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which also said it couldn’t find any records, Bloomberg reported.