Builders discover $10 million in gold under a homeless shelter
Renovation workers converting a brewery in Belgium into housing for the homeless found dozens of gold bars that likely belonged to a wealthy 19th-century businessman. Further excavation led to the discovery of British gold coins from the Victorian era.
A team of builders discovered gold worth $10 million during construction work at the site of an old Belgian brewery that was set to serve as a shelter for the homeless.
A team of eight workers in the city of Dendermonde found the treasure last week when a drill hit a gold bar, local police said. The gold was hidden in a bag under the stone basement floor of an 1890s villa built for the former owner of the brewery, Theophilus van Assche, said local police officer Katrien Brams.
The workers, including an 18-year-old student working a summer job who first noticed the gold, contacted their employers and the police to report the find, which included gold coins and gold bars from the Victorian era.
"Our teams collected and cataloged the gold, and then immediately secured it in a highly secure federal vault," the local police said in a statement on their Facebook page.
Photos showed 49 gold bars lying on a table at the construction site and hundreds of gold coins collected in a builder's bucket. The site, which was almost completely demolished, is being renovated by the welfare organization CAW Oost-Vlaanderen. The workers discovered the gold while in the process of laying sewage pipes for the new shelters that are to be built there.
The fate of the gold is unclear. Legal proceedings may be opened to decide whether the money will be transferred to the descendants of the van Assche family, the organization carrying out the work, or the workers themselves. The police of Dendermonde, a city of about 50,000 residents in the Flanders region, are warning potential gold seekers to stay away. They said all the gold has been cleared and that the site contains several dangerous pits.
"It seems that various gold seekers are eager to visit the site," the police statement read. "Perfect advice: it is really pointless." The discovery comes at a convenient time, with gold trading above $4,400 an ounce, after the value of gold has more than doubled in recent years.
Piet Buyse, the former mayor of Dendermonde, told the Belgian media that the gold likely belongs to the van Assche family, an old and wealthy Flemish family. Theophilus van Assche's three children never married, and it is possible that no one knew the gold was there, he said.
While the discovered gold does not yet have new owners, it is already being put to use. The Dendermonde police are using as their Facebook profile picture an image of a gold British sovereign coin with a picture of the young Queen Victoria on one side that was found at the site.
