A student working part-time at a construction site in Belgium stumbled upon a hidden gold treasure, estimated to be worth around €9 million, while carrying out excavation work for a sewer system.
“Suddenly, we saw something lying there. So we started digging it out. Then we saw a gold bar. It turned out to be a little more than we had thought,” said 18-year-old Kobe.
The student, whose identity has not been disclosed, was working with colleagues at the site of a former brewery on Van Langenhovestraat in Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde, around 30 km northwest of Brussels.
Interestingly, the treasure, which includes gold coins, nuggets and numbered bars, had been hidden in a sack inside a brick wall in the basement beneath an imposing villa originally built for the brewery owner, Theophilus Van Assche, at the end of the 19th century.
“This is definitely not what you expect while working on an ordinary Tuesday morning. The treasure appears to have been deliberately hidden. It was actually sealed inside the wall — not in a safe or anything like that,” Kobe said.
Brewing at the site began in 1899 and ended in 1970, while the listed building — whose gates still bear the initials “VA” — is being completely renovated by the social welfare organisation CAW Oost-Vlaanderen to create new offices and residential accommodation.
Geert Hillaert of CAW said:
“The brewery house was a beautiful building, but it is being completely rebuilt. In the end, only the walls will remain. The workers were laying drainage pipes when they came across the gold.”
Kobe and his colleagues called the police and notified CAW as soon as they discovered the gold treasure. The valuables have since been transferred to a secure vault in Brussels pending a detailed official investigation to establish legal ownership.
Hanne Ollevier of the East Flanders public prosecutor’s office said the authorities must first make sure that the bars are not stolen property or proceeds of criminal activity, and that the case is likely to lead to a complicated civil dispute.
Importantly, the construction contractors, the charity and any descendants of the once-wealthy Van Assche family may all be able to claim a share of the fortune. Belgian law requires finders of treasure to wait at least five years for potential owners to come forward and claim their rights to it.
“The Van Assche fortune definitely remained in the family. I would not be surprised at all if they had decided to invest at least part of it in gold and then hide it in a secure place,” said former Dendermonde mayor Piet Buyse.
For his part, Kobe said that he and his colleagues immediately realised they had to hand over such a valuable find, adding:
“If it had only been a few coins, maybe not. But perhaps in the end we will receive some kind of finder’s reward.”
Source: unian.net