On 11 August 2026, workers laying a sewer pipe in Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde, in East Flanders, opened a cellar wall and found gold. The VRT broke the story on 13 August, then recounted it on the 14th: numbered bars, old British gold sovereigns, a bricked-up crate, an estimate of around 9 million euros, or more than 10 million dollars. A student on a summer job was among the finders. The gold was handed over to the police, inventoried, then placed in a high-security safe of the federal public services.
Two months later, the saga is not over. The East Flanders public prosecutor’s office is still seeking the origin of the metal and its legal owner. The former mayor of Dendermonde has put forward a name. Belgian law, for its part, asks another, drier question: who owns a treasure discovered by chance on someone else’s land?
What the workers found, and what the press has not yet pinned down
The settled facts fit into a few lines. The workers were employed by De Brand, a company based in Baasrode, on a building belonging to CAW Oost-Vlaanderen, a social welfare organisation in East Flanders. The VRT places the hiding place in a crate bricked into the walls of a cellar. GrenzEcho, quoting the CAW, specifies excavation work for a pipe on the Van Langenhovestraat site. The two accounts tally: renovation, cellar, hidden gold, an immediate call to the client, then to the police.
The count, for its part, is not yet an official inventory. The VRT speaks of numbered gold bars and old gold sovereigns, with no settled figure. The New York Times, quoting police chief Patrick Feys, settles on 49 bars and more than 4,000 coins. GrenzEcho, citing the CAW, speaks of 49 bars of one kilogram each and a large number of old coins. The shared estimate remains around 9 million euros. Until the prosecutor’s office publishes its own tally, these figures remain those of the press, not a definitive expert assessment.
The workers’ conduct, for its part, is not in dispute. They alerted their client, then the police. The Dendermonde police zone stated, on Facebook, that the gold had been recovered, inventoried and placed in a high-security safe of the federal public services. The New York Times adds a procedural detail: four people counted the coins on camera, at the police station, before the transfer to federal custody. Patrick Feys, chief of the Dendermonde police district, said he had initially thought it was a joke.
The investigation first: origin, legality, and only then the name
Hanne Ollevier, spokeswoman for the East Flanders prosecutor’s office, told the VRT as early as 13 August: at this stage, it is not known where this gold comes from, or who legally owns it. The prosecutor’s office wants to establish how the metal came to be in that cellar, and whether that happened illegally. Geert Hillaert of the CAW struck the same note: the discovery could also be the fruit of a dubious practice. The family hypothesis does not erase the criminal one.
This order of questions changes everything. As long as a criminal act has not been ruled out, the civil law of treasure does not apply. A stolen bar, or the proceeds of an offence, does not become a « treasure » within the meaning of the Civil Code. It remains the property of whoever can prove ownership, or it follows the path of seizure. The Federal Public Service Justice (FPS Justice), in the person of Sharon Beavis, reminded the VRT of this: the civil track only begins once the criminal aspect has been set aside.
In late August, Het Nieuwsblad reported that the investigation was passing from the local police to the federal police, with Patrick Feys mentioning checks abroad on the origin of the bars. As of 24 October 2026, no statement from the prosecutor’s office has closed this aspect. The saga continues because the first question is not « who inherits? ». It is « is this gold lawful? ».
The Van Assche lead: a historian’s hypothesis, not a judgment
Piet Buyse, a former mayor of Dendermonde for seventeen years and a historian, told the VRT that the treasure probably belonged to the Van Assche family of brewers. In 1899, Theofiel Van Assche bought a large plot of land on Van Langenhovestraat to build a brewery there. The treasure was found on that street, in the town house still standing on the site. Theofiel’s three children never married. After the death of the last descendant in 1982, the house was donated to Dendermonde Abbey, on the condition that it serve a good cause. That cause became the CAW.
Buyse adds a generational reading. The family, already very wealthy after the Second World War, may have placed part of its assets in gold, as many did after the 1929 crash. No one, in his view, knew that the metal was in the house at the time of the bequest. RTL info repeated these statements on 14 August. They shed light on the place. They do not settle ownership.
The prosecutor’s office has not adopted them as established fact. A numbered bar can, in theory, point back to a refiner. In practice, the registers of the time often disappeared along with the firms that kept them, and the recorded buyer was not always the private individual. Our first article on the discovery, Hoarding the metal: the lesson of Dendermonde’s nine million, dwelt on this lesson: the metal outlives the archives. The sequel is the law.
Five years for the owner, seven days to declare it
The Belgian regime for found property is no longer Article 716 of the old Civil Code. Since 1 September 2021, the governing provisions have been Articles 3.58 and 3.59 of Book 3, « Property », arising from the law of 4 February 2020. The text is in the Belgian Official Gazette. The FPS Justice gave its public reading of them to the VRT on 14 August, in connection with Dendermonde itself.
Article 3.58 first sets out duties. Anyone who finds a movable item must make reasonable efforts to trace its owner. If they fail to do so, they must declare the discovery, within seven days at the latest, to the municipality of their choice. The municipality enters it in a register. If the item is found on someone else’s property, the finder must also inform the owner, within the same period, by registered post. Sharon Beavis specified that this declaration can, depending on the circumstances, go through the police or the prosecutor’s office. The Dendermonde workers followed that route on the very day.
Article 3.59, paragraph 1, then sets the time limit everyone remembers. The item continues to belong to its original owner. The owner may recover it, or the proceeds of its sale, from the hands of the finder or the municipality, subject to reimbursing the reasonable costs of preservation, safekeeping and search. If the obligations of Article 3.58 have been met, the finder, or the municipality to which the item was handed over, becomes its owner only five years after the entry in the register, and only if the original owner has not come forward.
This five-year period is therefore not a countdown towards the State. It is the time left to the legitimate owner. In Dendermonde, the FPS Justice stated that the gold had been placed in a secure location made available by the public authorities, because the prosecutor’s investigation was still under way. In law, the finder could have kept the item himself, or entrusted it to the municipality. Here, the volume, the value and the criminal aspect dictated another choice, in practice.
The split: half to the finder, half to the property owner, subject to conditions
The Dendermonde case is not that of a wallet forgotten on a bench. The gold was hidden. Article 3.59, paragraph 3, then provides for a specific regime, and only if the hidden item has no owner.
If the owner of the property himself finds, within his property, a hidden item with no owner, it belongs to him, provided he has complied with the declaration obligations. If the hidden item is found in someone else’s property, the text divides it. It belongs half to the finder who holds a personal or real right of use over that property and who found it by chance, always subject to the obligations of Article 3.58. The other half belongs to the owner of the property in which it was found.
Three conditions, then, and none of them is secured in advance in Dendermonde.
- The item must have no identifiable owner. If a rightful claimant of the Van Assche family, or another holder, proves ownership within the time limit, the split does not apply.
- The discovery must be fortuitous. Pipe-laying work that runs into a bricked-up crate falls, in principle, within this case. An organised search, with a detector, does not. The Union of Cities and Municipalities of Wallonia points this out in connection with Article 3.59: chance is a condition, not an ornament.
- The finder entitled to the half share must hold a personal or real right of use over the property. A worker commissioned by a company, on a third party’s site, is not automatically that holder. The text names neither « the company » nor « the employee ». That is a point which the civil court, if seised, will have to characterise. To call it settled today would be to invent a ruling that does not exist.
Paragraph 4 adds a more modest route. A finder who does not become the owner, but who has fulfilled his obligations, is entitled, from the owner, to a reward that is reasonable in the circumstances. The VRT had already raised the question of a « vindersloon », a finder’s reward, without answering it. No one can answer it as long as the owner is unknown.
You may be wondering what would happen if no one came forward. The FPS Justice, quoted by the VRT, was clear on the principle and cautious on the case: for a hidden item found in someone else’s property, the split is half and half, between the qualified finder and the owner of the property. In Dendermonde, that property owner is CAW Oost-Vlaanderen, or the foundation that holds the land, according to the deeds. It is not the federal State, whose safe here is merely a place of safekeeping.
France does not copy this scheme, and the Dendermonde gold is not subject to it
The French comparison is illuminating, provided it is not transposed. Article 716 of the French Civil Code, still in force, states in substance that treasure found by chance in another person’s land belongs half to the discoverer and half to the owner of the land. On this single article, the two countries look alike. But France added, through the law of 7 July 2016, a specific regime for archaeological property: Article L. 541-4 of the Heritage Code then sets aside the split under Article 716, and such property is presumed to belong to the State from the recognition of its scientific interest.
This regime does not apply to Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde. It simply shows that « treasure » does not have the same outcome on both sides of the border. In Belgium, regional heritage decrees impose declaration obligations for archaeological discoveries, without making the federal State the owner of a batch of contemporary bars found in a cellar. For the Dendermonde gold, the question remains civil and, first of all, criminal.
What can be said today, and what it would be unwise to announce
As of 24 October 2026, three things are certain. The gold is no longer in the wall. It is in the custody of the authorities, in a federal safe, for the duration of the investigation. The legitimate owner, if there is one and if they can prove their right, has a period of five years to come forward, according to the reading the FPS Justice has given of Article 3.59. And nothing in the prosecutor’s office’s public statements has yet assigned the lot to the CAW, to the workers, to the Van Assche family or to the State.
The rest is a map, not a verdict.
- If the investigation links the gold to an offence, restitution follows criminal law and the dispossessed owner, not the treasure regime.
- If an original owner comes forward within five years and proves their right, the item remains theirs, subject to costs.
- If no one proves ownership, and if the hidden item was found by chance in someone else’s property, Article 3.59, paragraph 3, organises a half-and-half split, subject to the finder-status conditions already set out.
- If the finder does not meet these status conditions, they do not become the owner for all that. A reasonable reward remains open, to be discussed with whoever, in the end, is recognised as the owner.
At Gold & Silver Company, we observe that the question families ask, faced with metal taken out of a drawer or an estate, is rarely « to whom does the Civil Code award this lot? ». It is simpler: how much does it weigh, what is its fineness, and what is it worth at the day’s price. A certified bar is read by its weight and its fineness. So is an old coin, once identified. The Dendermonde saga does not change that mechanism. It simply recalls that a metal’s history and its measured value are two separate files. The first can remain open for years. The second is settled on a scale.
Frequently asked questions about the Dendermonde treasure
If I find gold while renovating a house in Belgium, can I keep it?
No, not automatically, and not in silence. Article 3.58 of the Belgian Civil Code first requires you to make reasonable efforts to find the owner. If you cannot find them, you declare the discovery within seven days to the municipality of your choice, which records it in a register. If the gold is on someone else’s property, you must also inform that owner within the same period. In Dendermonde, the workers followed that route on the very day. Keeping the metal without these steps deprives you of the benefit of the law. The original owner, for their part, has five years after the entry in the register to come forward and recover the item, subject to reimbursing the costs of preservation and search.
Does the five-year period mean the Belgian State becomes the owner of the Dendermonde gold?
No. The five-year period in Article 3.59 belongs to the original owner; it is not an automatic transfer to the public Treasury. Once that period has passed, and if the declaration obligations have been met, it is the finder, or the municipality to which the item was handed over, that can become the owner. For a hidden item with no owner found in someone else’s property, the law organises a split: half to the qualified finder, half to the owner of the property. In Dendermonde, the federal safe is merely a place of safekeeping chosen because the prosecutor’s investigation is continuing, as the FPS Justice explained to the VRT. Custody is not a title of ownership.
Is the Van Assche family the legal owner of this treasure?
We do not know, and the hypothesis is not a judgment. Piet Buyse, a former mayor and historian, told the VRT that the gold probably belonged to this family of brewers, whose home was donated in 1982 to the abbey and later assigned to the CAW. The prosecutor’s office, for its part, replies that the origin and the legal owner are unknown. A historical lead sheds light on the place; it does not replace proof of title. If a rightful claimant proves ownership within five years, the item remains theirs and the split with the finder does not open. If no one can, the question becomes that of a hidden item with no owner. And the criminal investigation comes before that civil debate.
In France, does a treasure found in a wall also belong half to the discoverer?
On the sole basis of Article 716 of the French Civil Code, yes: if the treasure is found by the pure effect of chance in another person’s land, it belongs half to the discoverer and half to the owner of the land. But France added, through the law of 7 July 2016, a specific regime for archaeological property: Article L. 541-4 of the Heritage Code then sets aside this split, and such property is presumed to belong to the State from the recognition of its scientific interest. This regime does not apply to the gold found in Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde. It simply shows that the border changes the legal sequel of one and the same cellar.
Does a bar with no known history still have value once taken out of a wall?
Yes. A bar’s value does not depend on the story surrounding it, but on its weight, its fineness and the day’s price. A cast number or a hallmark can guide a search for its origin, but the registers of post-war refiners have often disappeared, and the name of the last private individual does not always appear in them. That is what the Dendermonde discovery reminds us: archives fade, the metal can still be weighed. In our branches, the analysis is done on a scale, with the screen turned towards the person presenting the lot, followed by a line-by-line quote. A metal’s history and its measured value are two separate files, and the second is always settled on a scale.