Military buff finds £2mln worth of gold bullion hidden inside Iraqi tank

PanARMENIAN.Net - A military buff who bought a tank on eBay for £30,000 could not believe his eyes when he found £2million in gold bars hidden inside.

The five gold bars, hidden in the diesel tank, are believed to have been looted by Iraqi soldiers during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the Daily Mail said.

Nick Mead, 55, runs Tanks-a-Lot on a site in Helmdon, Northamptonshire and was restoring the Russian T54 tank to add to the collection of 150 military vehicles.

Mr Mead had traded an Army lorry and an Abbot self-propelled gun for the tank. He had found machine gun ammunition while stripping it down and feared guns might have been stored inside the fuel tank.

Mr Mead told The Sun: 'They must have cut a hole in the fuel tank and rammed it full of gold bars.'

Mr Mead and his mechanic Todd Chamberlain were filming the operation because they feared they might find weapons and wanted to be able to prove where it came from in case any awkward questions were asked.

But instead they pulled out the bars, which weighed five kilos each.

Mr Chamberlain joked: 'We didn't know what to do. You can't exactly take five gold bullion bars down to Cash Converters without questions being asked, so we called the police.'

Two officers from Northamptonshire Police took the bars away for investigation and handed him a receipt.

It is thought enquiries will be made in Kuwait to see if the gold can be matched to any bullion which was stolen during Iraq's invasion in August 1990.

Mr Mead does not seem bothered that £2million might have just slipped through his fingers.

'Even if I don't get any of the gold back I will still have my beautiful tank,' he said. A Northamptonshire Police spokesman said they could not comment 'for operational reasons'.