Story By: Sofija Dizdarevik, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
This honest man has been praised after finding 25,000 EUR in a chest of second-hand drawers and returning the cash to the family he purchased them from.
Petar Gavran, 22, originally from Slavonski Brod, a city in Eastern Croatia close to the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, decided to buy a used chest of drawers to furnish his new flat in Germany.
Gavran saw an advertisement online and bought the furniture, going to the seller’s house in the Werden borough of the city of Essen in western Germany to pick it up with a friend.
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He told local media: “When a friend and I came for the furniture, we didn’t notice anything strange. Even the man we bought the furniture from helped us carry it to the car because it’s massive.
“It was only on the staircase of my building that I noticed something was rolling inside the dresser.”
When Gavran and his friend got to his flat, he opened the drawers and found family photo albums along with envelopes stuffed with 25,000 EUR (21,790 GBP) in cash.
He said: “I then opened the drawers in the apartment and saw the albums. I was surprised. The family albums were not so shocking, but the money inside… tens of thousands of euros!
“I thought they were kidding me, like they sold me a dresser, so now they tease me with envelopes with the money they left behind. One was partially torn, so I gently opened it and pulled it out, held it up to the light and saw that it was real”.
Gavran reportedly took some time to decide what to do with the cash, worried that it might be somehow connected to a crime, but eventually, he called the family he bought the furniture from, and told them about the family albums.
They asked him to bring the albums back to them, and when he went to their house hoping to also ask questions, he realised they did not know about the cash, that had been in the chest of drawers belonging to a deceased relative whose furniture they were selling.
He then told them about the money and gave it back to them after all sides agreed the cash had belonged to the deceased relative.
Gavran said: “The money probably belonged to someone who lived in the apartment and died. They live in the countryside and the apartment is family-owned. They started selling things now.
“There was no chance for me to keep the money, I could not use it, I would not find happiness with it, it would be unhappy money for me.”
He said the family “rewarded” him for his honesty but he did not specify what the reward was.
His brother Antonio wrote on social media that he was “so proud of my brother,” adding the family had received “joy at finding something lost” and his brother had “a memory for life and pleasure at the fact that he did a good deed”.
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