ATHENS: Children playing in northwestern Greece found a bag containing ¤43,000 that an elderly woman had hidden in a derelict building fearing the crisis-hit country’s banks were unsafe, police said yesterday.
While playing near a square in the city of Ioannina on Friday, a group of primary school children aged around nine and ten stumbled upon the money in a bag stashed away in the building, police said confirming media accounts.
According to the state-run Athens News Agency, nearby residents spotted the children playing with and even tearing up banknotes and alerted the police.
Authorities traced the bag to an 83-year-old woman who said she withdrew her savings from the bank three years ago, fearing she would lose her money because of the economic crisis, the agency reported. She could not remember the exact amount and estimated it to be around ¤50,000 to ¤70,000. Police said the abandoned building actually belongs to the woman. AFP
