Are you the owner of a stolen Moof bicycle that you found after a year?

Questioner

In March 2020, our son found a Moof bicycle that was not locked. We immediately reported this to the police and filled in the lost and found register at the municipality. After a year, we received an email from the municipality stating that we were now the owners of this bicycle. Since this electric bicycle does not have a charger, we called the company to ask if we could buy a charger from them. At first, they said that this bicycle was not known to Van Moof as stolen, but they had to look further to see if they could arrange a charger for us. Then came the response from Van Moof that this bicycle had been reported as stolen. And that they were now officially the owners of the bicycle because they had supplied the owner with a new replacement bicycle. It turned out that the bicycle was registered as stolen as of March 2020. Is this indeed the case that even though we have had the bicycle in our possession for more than a year, Van Moof can now claim the bicycle after more than 1 year? They should have done this much earlier, shouldn't they? Thank you in advance for your response. Kind regards

Lawyer

If you have registered the bike on the register immediately, the manufacturer is indeed very late in reacting. He will possibly appeal to subrogation, which means that he is acting in his rights instead of the first owner to claim the bike because of the current theft insurance, but is actually too late in doing so.