The collection includes numbered bullion bars as well as coins and gold nuggets. According to Kobe, its hiding place suggested that somebody had deliberately placed it beyond casual reach.
“It was really bricked in there – not in a safe or anything,” he said.
The workers contacted police and notified CAW Oost-Vlaanderen, the social welfare organisation renovating the building. Authorities subsequently transferred the gold to a secure facility in Brussels while investigators examine its origins and ownership.
The discovery was valuable enough to make keeping quiet an implausible career plan.
“If it had been a few coins, maybe not,” Kobe said. “But maybe we’ll get some kind of finder’s reward eventually.”
The brewery villa may hold clues to the gold’s owner
The treasure was found beneath a grand villa built in the late 19th century for Theophilus Van Assche, the owner of the brewery that once operated on the site. Brewing began there in 1899 and continued until 1970.
The listed property still carries traces of that history, including wrought-iron gates marked with the initials “VA”. CAW Oost-Vlaanderen is now carrying out an extensive renovation to create offices and housing.
“The Brouwershuis was a beautiful building, but it is being completely gutted,” CAW’s Geert Hillaert told the Belgian outlet HLN. “Ultimately, only the walls will remain. Labourers were laying drainage pipes when they stumbled across the gold.”
Former Dendermonde mayor Piet Buyse told HLN that he knew the once-wealthy Van Assche family and considered it plausible that the bullion had belonged to them.
The family’s fortune had “certainly stayed in the family”, Buyse said. “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.”
That remains a theory rather than an established account of how the treasure reached the cellar. Investigators must still determine when the gold was hidden, who placed it there and whether any records connect it to the property’s former owners.
Police must establish whether the bullion has a criminal history
Before any civil claims can be settled, authorities must verify that the gold was not stolen or acquired through criminal activity.
Hanne Ollevier, of the East Flanders public prosecutor’s office, told HLN that establishing the bullion’s origin would be the first task. Only then can the competing questions of ownership be addressed.
The location and manner of concealment are likely to receive particular scrutiny. A bag of numbered gold bars sealed behind brickwork is not, by itself, proof of wrongdoing, but neither is it the conventional filing system for openly held family assets.
If investigators find no criminal connection, the case is still likely to produce a complicated civil dispute. Possible claimants include the building contractors, CAW Oost-Vlaanderen and descendants of the Van Assche family.
Belgian law could leave the find unresolved for years
Belgian law requires finders to wait at least five years while potential owners are given an opportunity to claim discovered treasure. Kobe and his colleagues therefore face a considerably longer wait than the average summer employee hoping for a bonus.
Any eventual finder’s reward — or share of the hoard — will depend on the investigation and the legal arguments advanced by those claiming an interest in the gold. Its estimated €9 million value makes an uncontested outcome unlikely.
For now, the bullion remains secured in Brussels, while the teenager who first mistook it for loose change has returned the treasure to authorities and gained a very unusual answer to the question of how his summer job went.
The sewer may be finished long before Belgium decides who gets the gold found beside it.
