Builders Unearth €9m Gold Hoard Sealed Inside a Belgian Cellar Wall

Among them was an 18-year-old on a summer job, named only as Kobe, who told Belgian public broadcaster VRT his first reaction was “actually disbelief, amazement”. He said: “At first I thought they were €1 coins. But then we also saw a gold nugget lying there.”

Who gets to keep the gold hoard?

The crew alerted police almost immediately, and the site manager, named only as Mario, said keeping any of it was never an option. “There are so many coins and bars — it would be almost impossible,” he told VRT. “Besides, that would be theft.” Not every haul is handed in so readily: Joe has reported on £4 million in cash found stuffed into supermarket bags during a UK drugs bust.

The property belongs to CAW Oost-Vlaanderen, a welfare charity in Dendermonde, and both the builders and the charity could lay claim to the money. Director Geert Hillaert said he hoped it might fund the charity’s work and meet the “enormous need we experience daily”. Sudden fortune does not always land so well — Joe has written about a lottery winner who blew £80,000 in weeks — but this one may yet do some good.

Police have urged the public not to descend on the site, warning it has been “turned upside down” and the gold moved somewhere secure. An investigation is under way and, under Belgian law, the rightful owner has five years to come forward. BBC News reports the force hopes the haul ends up in “the right place”.