A senior CIA official was arrested after FBI agents discovered more than $40 million worth of gold bars and millions of dollars in cash inside his Virginia residence, according to court documents.
David Rush was arrested May 19 following an investigation that began after an internal CIA review identified potential violations of federal law and referred the matter to the FBI.
Rush, who until recently held a senior position at the CIA, was described in court documents as a former senior executive service-level employee at a US government agency.
The extraordinary discovery came May 18, when FBI agents searched Rush’s home and found approximately 303 gold bars, each weighing about one kilogram.
Authorities estimated the gold was worth more than $40 million.
Agents also recovered approximately $2 million in US currency and nearly three dozen luxury watches, many of them Rolexes, according to the New York Times.
The massive stash has raised questions about why a government official had tens of millions of dollars worth of gold inside his home.
Court documents indicate that between November and March, Rush requested and received a significant amount of foreign currency along with tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.
When the CIA later reviewed the location of those assets, the agency was unable to account for them.
The CIA was “unable to locate the gold bars or significant amounts of the foreign currency,” according to court documents cited by the Times.
The documents do not explain what CIA work required the gold and foreign currency or why the assets ultimately appeared to be inside Rush’s residence.
Despite the enormous amount of gold recovered from his home, Rush has not been charged with stealing the gold, according to the report.
Instead, the criminal charge against him centers on allegations that he stole public money by submitting fraudulent time sheets.
Authorities allege Rush falsely represented himself as a member of the Navy Reserve after he had been discharged, allowing him to receive tens of thousands of dollars in military leave pay.
Investigators also accused Rush of inflating his academic credentials.
The CIA and FBI confirmed that the investigation originated within the intelligence agency.
“After a C.I.A. internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the F.B.I. for a law enforcement investigation,” the agencies said in a joint statement.
Rush was being held in jail pending a detention hearing at the time of the report.
His attorney declined to comment to the Times.
The circumstances surrounding the gold remain largely unexplained in the publicly available court filings.
Authorities have not said that Rush personally owned the gold, nor have they charged him with stealing it. The documents instead indicate that the gold and foreign currency had been provided for work-related purposes before the CIA was subsequently unable to locate the assets.
The investigation now leaves unanswered questions about what the gold was intended for, why hundreds of bars were allegedly found at Rush’s home and whether additional charges could eventually emerge.
