It appears that a single party in the US, one that is very powerful so that the world's gold exchanges could not say no and one that has a vault to keep all this gold in. 8,000 tons.
They are in a position to manipulate the gold market. Most people who trade gold do so on paper. The ratio is said to be greater than 200 to 1. So if people want to take possession of that gold that they think they own on paper you are going to have a crisis. Imagine a nuclear bomb is dropped on Kyiv, everyone worldwide panics, they want their gold, well the price of gold could skyrocket 30 fold. Instead of 3k an ounce it could be 90k an ounce.
Now I am going to guess that the audit of the US gold holdings at Fort Knox are associated with this purchase of physical gold.