Are you familiar with the credit/subprime/banking/hedge-fund crisis? Compound interest is all very well and good, but sometimes people are more concerned with the return OF their money, not just the return ON their money, and rightly so it appears.
Have considered getting a safe a time or two, but it just seems to scream “rob me at gunpoint”. If I could get one those round, in the ground types embedded in cement, that would be the way to go. But any safe would have to be secret, which is just about impossible.
If your don’t get a return on the money, inflation eats it right up. Even with interest at bank rates, the money is still losing value to inflation but more slowly than without any interest. Also bank deposits are insured against the bank failing for crisis like you mentioned.
Assuming that he accumulated all this money legitimately over the course of his working life, imagine how much more he would have if he had just put it into a savings account. Confiscation like this is wrong and IMHO unconstitutional- the burden of proof should always rest with the government- but if he had put his money in the bank he would have been better off in so many ways.