A routine morning on a Belgian building site turned into a multimillion-euro discovery when an 18-year-old student digging trenches for a sewage system stumbled upon a hidden hoard of gold estimated to be worth €9 million ( ₹85.90 crore)
The student, identified as Kobe, was working with colleagues when they made the discovery, The Guardian reported, citing Belgian news network VTM. “We suddenly saw something lying there,” Kobe told VTM. “At first I thought it was €1 coins. So we started digging them up. Then we saw a gold bar. It turned out to be a bit more than we thought.”
The discovery was made on Tuesday at the site of a former brewery on Van Langenhovestraat in Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde, about 19 miles (30km) north-west of Brussels, the report added.
Also Read: Hikers unearth buried treasure: 200-year-old gold coins found hidden in wall. They are worth…
Gold coins, nuggets stashed in bag
The hoard includes gold coins, nuggets and numbered bullion bars. It had been stashed in a bag inside a bricked-in cellar wall beneath a grand villa originally built for brewery owner Theophilus Van Assche in the late 19th century.
“It’s just not something you expect when you’re working on a regular Tuesday morning,” Kobe said, adding that the treasure appeared to have been deliberately hidden. “It was really bricked in there, not in a safe or anything.”
Kobe and his colleagues immediately contacted police and notified CAW after finding the hoard. The gold has since been moved to a secure facility in Brussels while authorities investigate its ownership.
Hanne Ollevier of the East Flanders public prosecutor’s office told HLN, as reported by the Guardian, that authorities must first establish that the bullion was not stolen property or the proceeds of criminal activity. The discovery could also lead to a complex civil dispute over who is legally entitled to the fortune.
The building contractors, CAW and descendants of the once-wealthy Van Assche family could all potentially have a claim to part of the hoard. Under Belgian law, finders must wait at least five years for potential owners to come forward and claim treasure.
Also Read: Boy finds gold ornaments in Karnataka temple. Govt launches treasure hunt
Former Dendermonde mayor Piet Buyse told HLN that the Van Assche family’s wealth had “certainly stayed in the family. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they had decided to put at least some of it in gold, and then to hide it in a safe place.”
Kobe said he and his colleagues knew immediately that such a large discovery had to be handed over to the authorities. “If it had been a few coins, maybe not,” he said. “But maybe we’ll get some kind of finder’s reward eventually.”
