Buried treasure: Belgium hunts for the owner of a $10 million gold hoard

Who hasn’t dreamed of finding a buried treasure? The fantasy came true a week ago in the Belgian city of Dendermonde, northwest of Brussels, when a teenage student working a summer construction job uncovered a stash of gold bars and coins worth an estimated €9 million ($10.5 million), buried in the foundations of a building undergoing renovation. But the second part of that dream — being able to live off the windfall — won’t come true: the gold is hidden once again, kept “safely” at a secret location, according to local police.

And there it will remain until investigators determine where the treasure came from, the other great mystery that continues to baffle residents, local historians and even the authorities of this quiet Flemish town, which is only just beginning to recover from the international stir caused by the extraordinary find.

No matter how much he thinks about it, and he has spent days doing so since news of the find broke last Thursday, Luc Michiels cannot come up with a convincing explanation for the treasure unearthed on what was once the estate of the Van Assches, a wealthy local brewing family.

“It’s incredible — how could no one have known the gold was hidden?” asks the retired engineer, who heads the town’s historical society, as he looks at what remains of the estate.

As custodian of the archives of the old brewery that once stood behind the family mansion, now in ruins, Michiels might seem well placed to solve the mystery. The handful of construction workers who witnessed the discovery have already returned to work now that the first wave of curiosity seekers and journalists has faded away. But the answer does not appear to lie in the documents either.

At first, like the police who were called as soon as the treasure was found, Michiels thought the family must have hidden the gold during World War I or World War II for fear of it being stolen by invading German soldiers. But that theory quickly fell apart: several of the bars are much more recent. Photographs released by the East Flanders prosecutor’s office, which is leading the investigation, show that some are dated 1957 and 1960.

The brewery closed in the 1970s. Michiels knew the last members of the Van Assche family: three siblings, two men and a woman, who died childless between the 1960s and the early 1980s. The family, he recalls, was very “reserved,” somewhat “snobbish,” rather “stingy,” and kept apart from the local community. His friend and fellow historical society member Johan Van Damme, whose mother lived on the same street as the Van Assches, shares that assessment.

They were also “very religious.” The family paid for the neighborhood church bell that had to be replaced after the Nazis took the original and they gave generously to charity. That is reflected in the will that came to light after the death of Maria Van Assche, the last direct descendant of the brewing dynasty. Everything was bequeathed to the Abbey of Dendermonde, with strict instructions that it be used for charitable causes. Did that include the treasure?

“It’s odd that the will didn’t mention it. I have the feeling they [the siblings] knew nothing,” Michiels speculates, lamenting that “there’s no one left alive who can clarify this mystery.”

That is something Patrick Feys, the chief of police in Dendermonde, would also like to know. He admits that “his hands were shaking” when he carried out the first inventory of the treasure: several dozen bars and thousands of gold coins, including gold sovereigns, a popular investment asset that now trades at close to €1,000 ($1,170) per coin.

In total, the haul is worth about €9 million at current exchange rates. Feys initially stored the treasure in his station under extraordinary security measures — three officers guarded the treasure at the same time, under the watch of three additional surveillance cameras, he says. But he was relieved when it was moved to a “secure location” he refuses to reveal.

For now, the prosecutor’s office is still trying to “determine whether the case has any criminal aspects” or not, in which case it would become a “civil matter” and fall outside the office’s jurisdiction, a spokesperson said by email. No one is yet willing to completely rule out a criminal connection, not least because one of the first uses of the residence where the treasure was hidden, after it passed into the hands of a religious order, was as a shelter for former inmates. But neither local historians nor the police find that theory particularly convincing.

“We think the family hid it. It’s the most logical explanation, but we don’t know why,” Feys admits.

It is also not yet known who will ultimately end up with the treasure. Several people from around the world have already come forward to claim it, offering the most outlandish arguments imaginable, the police chief says with a laugh.

One recent email he received came from an Asian country and was sent by a man “who says he was reincarnated, recalls living in Belgium in the 1960s and hiding a treasure but not remembering where. He thought it was only a dream until he saw the news and realized it was true,” the commissioner recounts. But the Dendermonde police department replied wryly on Facebook, “reincarnation is still not considered valid evidence.”

Another claimant, writing from Lithuania, says his grandfather used to tell a story, one nobody believed, that he had worked for the Van Assche family and helped them hide the treasure, part of which belonged to him. Now the grandson is claiming it.

Some locals have also alleged tenuous family connections to the brewing family. Except for the most far-fetched cases, which are ignored outright, the police invite claimants to contact specialized lawyers.

The truth, if it is ever known, will take time, warns Feys. Under Belgian law, authorities have up to five years to determine the origin of a fortune of this kind. If it cannot be established, the most likely beneficiary is the local charity CAW, which currently owns the land where the treasure was found.

For Feys, it would be “a beautiful ending”: after all, the Van Assches left their money to social causes, and that is precisely what the nonprofit organization does.

Philip Kobe, the student who discovered the treasure and alerted the authorities — another “nice story,” and a “moral example in these times,” according to the police, who lament the criticism and mockery directed at him and his co-workers for not keeping the gold — hopes to receive some compensation himself.

But that will take time, Feys warns. There will be no shortage of money.

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