Mystery owner of £150,000 worth of gold bars left on train urged to come forward

The cost of rail travel has soared in recent years but a mystery train passenger paid a far greater price when they lost £150,000 worth of gold during their journey.

The Swiss authorities have made a public appeal for help to find the owner of gold bars weighing a total of 3kg that were left in a carriage.

The owner has five years to reclaim the haul, which was found last October on a train that had travelled from St Gallen to Lucerne, about 30 miles south of Zurich, reports the BBC.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Officials say they have now gone public about the find after “extensive investigations” failed to reveal the origins of the gold, which is in the keeping of the Lucerne public prosecutor’s office, according to The Independent.

The office has already received “a number of queries” about the valuable lost property, the newspaper adds, but “it remains unclear how authorities will verify the claims of anyone who comes forward”.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The loss of the valuable gold is “eye-popping even for a wealthy Alpine country with a high cost, and standard, of living”, adds The Guardian.

In a similar incident three years ago, authorities in Geneva found wads of cut-up €500 notes “mysteriously jammed into the toilets of three restaurants and a bank in separate episodes”, says the newspaper.

The shredded notes reportedly “appeared to have come from a safe deposit box in Geneva belonging to unidentified Spanish women”.

A lawyer for the women subsequently came forward and offered to pay for the damage caused to the plumbing at the restaurants and bank, according to Swiss paper Tribune de Geneve.