{"id":58667,"date":"2026-08-14T13:36:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T13:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/builders-unearth-e9m-gold-loot-sealed-in-walls-of-belgian-property\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T13:36:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T13:36:38","slug":"builders-unearth-e9m-gold-loot-sealed-in-walls-of-belgian-property","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/builders-unearth-e9m-gold-loot-sealed-in-walls-of-belgian-property\/","title":{"rendered":"Builders unearth \u20ac9m gold loot sealed in walls of Belgian property"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Soon after, they alerted police to the discovery and explained that them keeping it for themselves was not an option.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There are so many coins and bars &#8211; it would be almost impossible,&#8221; the site manager Mario told VRT.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Besides, that would be theft.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kobe agreed: &#8220;\u20ac9m \u2013 you simply can&#8217;t keep that hidden.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The property currently belongs to CAW Oost-Vlaanderen, which provides welfare support in Dendermonde, a Flemish community of around 47,000 people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Its director, Geert Hillaert, said his first reaction was &#8220;surprise and amazement&#8221;, adding that he hoped the loot might eventually be used to support the charity&#8217;s work and meet the &#8220;enormous need we experience daily&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Local police urged the public not visit the active construction site looking for treasure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The force &#8211; which has updated its Facebook profile picture to an image of a gold coin &#8211; said it hoped the discovery would end up in &#8220;the right place&#8221; and change people&#8217;s lives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The rightful owner has five years to claim the hoard under Belgian law &#8211; though the local prosecutor, who has launched an investigation, said it was not yet known who this might be.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If no one comes forward, civil law states that hidden treasure on someone else&#8217;s property be divided between the finder and the property&#8217;s owner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This only applies, though, if the loot is not found to be linked to criminal activity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Both the builders and the charity now face a wait of up to 1,823 days for an owner to come forward. If no one speaks up to successfully claim it, silence truly will be golden.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c5ydzg0dnz7o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Soon after, they alerted police to the discovery and explained that them keeping it for themselves was not an option. &#8220;There are so many coins and bars &#8211; it would be almost impossible,&#8221; the site manager Mario told VRT. &#8220;Besides, that would be theft.&#8221; Kobe agreed: &#8220;\u20ac9m \u2013 you simply can&#8217;t keep that hidden.&#8221; The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58669,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58667\/revisions\/58669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}