‘We’ve found gold’: Belgian builders strike €9m treasure hidden behind cellar wall

An 18-year-old thought he had spotted a scatter of €1 coins while laying a drainage pipe, until a gold nugget rolled out beside them. What his crew had actually found, sealed inside a vault built into a cellar wall in Belgium, turned out to be a hoard worth an estimated €9 million. 

A gold nugget between the rubble

Workers from a local construction firm were carrying out groundworks on Tuesday August 11, laying a pipe for the sewerage system of a building on Van Langenhovestraat in Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde, East Flanders. When they removed a section of the foundations in the cellar, one of them spotted a scatter of coins lying in the rubble. “At first, I thought they were €1 coins,” said Kobe, an 18-year-old student on the crew. “But then we also saw a gold nugget lying there. That’s when we realised it was something bigger.” The crew’s first reaction was disbelief. “We certainly hadn’t expected to find gold,” Kobe said. 

Coins and bars kept turning up as the digging continued

Site manager Mario went to check what the commotion was about after workers shouted that they had found gold. “I went to have a look and picked up the gold,” he said. “We kept digging up more coins and bars. Only then did it really sink in what we’d found.”

The coins and ingots had been sealed inside a chest built into a hidden vault in the cellar wall, according to VRT. Mario said the discovery left “a strange feeling” after decades on building sites.

Why the gold went straight to the police

Although many people in their situation may have thought they’d just been made rich, keeping the find never seriously crossed the workers’ minds, both men said, mostly because of the sheer scale of it. “There are so many coins and bars, it would be almost impossible,” Mario said. “Besides, that would be theft.” Kobe agreed. “We did briefly consider keeping it. But it’s simply too much money. If it were a few thousand euros, it might be feasible. But nine million euros, you simply can’t keep that hidden.”

The find was reported to the site manager’s employer, then to the building’s owner and the police. The gold has since been moved to a secure location, said Hanne Ollevier of the East Flanders Public Prosecutor’s Office. “We’re keeping it under guard because it’s such a large sum,” she said. “We don’t want anyone getting ideas about coming to look for that money.”

How a homeless shelter could end up inheriting the fortune 

The building belongs to the Centrum Algemeen Welzijnswerk (CAW), a Flemish charity that provides social support services and is converting the property into a reception centre for homeless people. If the gold legally ends up in the charity’s hands, it will go towards funding shelters and social services, said CAW spokesperson Geert Hillaert. 

“We will obviously have to comply with all the relevant rules and legislation,” Hillaert said. “From a tax perspective, I imagine there are certain things that need to be taken into account too.” He added that the find could equally be linked to fraud carried out by a previous owner of the building.

Why the case could run for years

Ollevier said investigators must now establish how long the gold had been hidden, whether it is connected to any past criminal activity, and whether a legitimate owner can be traced. Hillaert expects any dispute to end up before a civil court, given the possibility of rival claims from descendants of a former owner, as well as a finder’s fee sought by both the charity and the construction company.

For now, the coins and bars remain in a police vault while the investigation continues. Kobe hopes there might be something in it for him and his colleagues. “After 33 years in the construction industry, this is the first time I’ve experienced anything like this,” Mario said. “I don’t think it will ever happen again.”