Swiss police looking for owner of gold bars worth US$190,000 left on train
- The bars were found in a package on a train that arrived in the central city of Luzern last October
- Swiss police have tried and failed to return them to their owner, who now has five years to claim them
If you happened to leave a stash of gold bars worth more than US$190,000 on a train in Switzerland, you can now come forward to claim it.
Authorities in the central city of Luzern say a package containing bars worth some 182,000 Swiss francs was found in a train that arrived from the northern town of St Gallen in October 2019.
The bars were then seized by Luzern prosecutors.
The owner of the gold could not be tracked down despite “extensive investigations”, authorities said.
While the weight was not given, calculations at current prices mean the bars weighed about 3.45kg.
Regional authorities on Tuesday confirmed a statement from law enforcement over the weekend saying any claimant has five years to report “justified claims” of ownership.
The incident is eye-popping even for a wealthy Alpine country with a high cost and standard of living.
In a similar incident three years ago, authorities in Geneva turned up wads of cut-up 500-euro notes (about US$600 at the time) that were mysteriously jammed into the toilets of three restaurants and a bank in separate episodes. The shredded notes were once worth tens of thousands of euros in total.
Switzerland, where locals sometimes buy groceries with a 1,000-franc note, has long attracted those who like their spending to leave no trace.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg