just an innocent question, why fuck would sovereign state store its national treasure in another sovereign state's vaults, anybody?

Because it had become a looted, occupied, carved up and divided police state territory after losing the war, and never recovered it. Degaulle recovered France's, then "IT" happened...

http://goldratefortoday.org/history-gold-part-3-bretton-woods-system/

and now it's happening again

http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/gold_dollar_France_Sarkozy_de_Gaulle_crisis_111020072

There is no more "US Gold" there hasn't been and there still isn't, it was mostly all on paper to begin with and that was lent out and stolen and then the dud loan/bonds and their "derivatives" were/have been and still are being "hypothecated" a hundred times over.

I explain "derivatives" here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175708.msg1832923#msg1832923