The first sentence of the original article states that XRF won't tell you if the core of the bar has been replaced with a different metal: "You don’t need to be

The first sentence of the original article states that XRF won't tell you if the core of the bar has been replaced with a different metal: "You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to find this worrying: a 1kg gold bar, certified as 99.98% pure by XRF (X-ray fluorescence) tests, turns out to have been drilled out and largely replaced with tungsten" The article also says that a micro-ohm meter can detect such replacement.