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.
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.
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.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
-
A reckoning over looted artThe Explainer Thousands of artifacts in U.S. and European collections were stolen from their countries of origin. Should they be sent back?
-
A surge in surge pricing
Feature And more of the week's best financial insight
-
Rupert Murdoch steps aside at the empire he built
Feature The last of the old-style 'press barons' has retired. What is he leaving behind?
-
Dodgy cash disguised as sandwiches
Tall Tales And other stories from the stranger side of life
-
Argentinian police arrest biggest online distributor of Nazi propaganda
Speed Reads Officials seized hundreds of texts glorifying Adolf Hitler, denying Holocaust and bearing swastikas
-
How North Korean hackers stole billions in crypto
Speed Read Pyongyang-backed cyber gangs use ‘mixers’ to launder their criminal proceeds
-
Brain-damaged seals attack bathers
feature And other stories from the stranger side of life
-
Chinese secret police stations around the globe
feature Report claims Chinese citizens in exile are monitored and coerced by their own authorities
-
Turkish government blames Kurdish separatists for Istanbul bombing
Speed Read Blast in busy street on Sunday killed six people and wounded scores more
-
Thousands attend vigils for Cassius Turvey in Australia
In Pictures Case of murdered Aboriginal schoolboy has ‘shocked’ the nation
-
Multiple explosions in Kyiv after Crimea bridge attack
Speed Read President Zelenskyy says Moscow is ‘trying to wipe us off the face of the Earth’
