Colombia on July 14 invited investors to bid on salvaging $10 billion worth of treasure from a shipwreck in the Caribbean Sea.
Image from the San Jose shipwreck in the sea off the coast of Colombia.
The Spanish ship San Jose sank off the coast of Colombia in June 1708, while carrying gold and silver mined from colonial mines in Peru and Bolivia back to King Philip V. Only a few survived. out of a total of 600 crew members.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos currently wants to cooperate with private individuals to salvage treasures from the Spanish shipwreck and build a museum to display artifacts as well as a laboratory to research and preserve them.
Colombia has not announced the official value of the shipwreck’s treasure, but experts estimated in 1980 that the amount of gold and silver under the sea was worth up to $10 billion.
Treasure hunters have long been searching for the San Jose and it was discovered in November 2015. At that time, the ship was said to be the most valuable treasure discovered in human history.
The Colombian government said there is currently no dispute or looting from the San Jose ship. Despite this, Spain believes that this country is the owner of the treasure because it was on a Spanish ship.
In the 1980s, the American marine search company Armada announced that it had discovered the San Jose shipwreck and became involved in a dispute over the ship’s ownership with the Colombian government.
But this discovery was not confirmed and in 2011, a US court declared the San Jose shipwreck to be Colombian property.
