Paying 300,000 euros for a piece of aged paper, jackpot or crazy bet? Henri B., an octogenarian from Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis), acquired a Treasury bond issued by the Romanian state in 1929, reports The Parisian. The paper mentions a debt of “500 Francs Auci”, that is 500 gold francs, from the Romanian State towards the bearer of the bond. A practice often used by States in the 1930s to finance their public debt.
The challenge lies in the interest rate associated with this voucher. According to the expertise of a Romanian financial company, it estimates the bond, 93 years after its issue, at 115 million euros. But Henri B.’s request receives, as you can imagine, a dead letter.
In 2020, the National Bank of Romania told him that it was not competent on the subject. At the start of 2022, the octogenarian contacted the Romanian embassy in France for the first time, before renewing his request last week for lack of a response. He now intends to turn to the French Ministry of Economy and Finance, then to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
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