20 years after the diamond robbery: An almost brilliant coup

Exactly 20 years ago, thieves in Antwerp’s diamond district landed a coup of the century. The Belgian gemstone metropolis lost its reputation. But today the industry is facing new challenges.

February 17, 2003 falls on a Monday. At half past seven in the morning, Patrick Peys’ phone rang, then a member of the Antwerp police’s special diamond unit. He is called to the world-famous diamond district of the Belgian port city: in the diamond center, a building where dealers can rent offices, thieves cleared out the vault in the basement over the weekend.

Peys arrives at the scene of the crime with a colleague: “The vault was normally locked with a 30 centimeter thick steel door, but it was wide open. There was a pile of garbage on the floor. But then you realize: These are documents, diamonds, jewels, gold bars . And then you realize you’re dealing with something very special.”

For Peys it will be the case of his life. He and his colleagues find out that the perpetrators tricked the magnetic alarm with a self-made device. They sprayed silicone spray on the heat sensor and placed a styrofoam plate in front of the motion detector – items from the hardware store for a few euros. Estimated value of the loot: at least a hundred million.

clues in the trash

A few hours later, August van Camp from the town of Vilvoorde reports to the police. The grocer owns a piece of forest on the motorway between Antwerp and Brussels. Van Camp found suspicious documents in garbage bags in the undergrowth.

His widow Annie Lauwers recalls: “He opened it as usual to find an address and to report the culprits. There were torn papers everywhere. Then he found the reference to the Antwerp Diamond Center and immediately called the local police – yes, and then It startet.”

The address on an invoice and toll papers for the burner in the waste lead the investigators to Leonardo Notarbartolo. The man from Turin rented an office in the diamond center for two years – to spy on the building. When the unsuspecting suspect returns to Antwerp from Italy to remove evidence, the Belgian police arrest him.

Lessons from the shock

Notarbartolo and three accomplices are sentenced to several years in prison. But the loss of reputation for Antwerp is enormous. The Belgian port city has developed over five centuries into the world metropolis of the diamond trade. Dealers, cutters, jewelers, diamond exchanges are concentrated on three small streets near the main train station.

They learn from the shock, says Philipp Claes, who worked for the Antwerp World Diamond Center (AWDC) lobby group at the time: “A comprehensive security system was set up for the diamond district, with the best technology. Before that, each building organized it for itself.” According to AWDC spokesman Tom Neys, the industry is constantly investing in its safety: “70 cultures and nationalities live and work together on these streets. We live in a bit of a bubble. Everyone feels safe inside, the dangers come from outside.”

Artificial gems and globalization

And from there come challenges that are more threatening to business than robbers and against which new cameras and sensors cannot help. New technologies make it possible, for example, to grow diamonds in the laboratory. They have almost the same properties as natural gemstones, but are much cheaper and can be produced in unlimited quantities.

According to the AWDC, nowhere else are so many precious stones handled as in Antwerp: 86 percent of the rough and 50 percent of the cut diamonds. According to the association, more than 30,000 jobs depend on the industry. But Mumbai and Dubai are catching up.

The diamond dealer Ulrich Freiesleben from the company Diamondas has witnessed the change: “When we opened our own company in Antwerp at the end of the 1980s, we covered 95 percent of our demand for cut diamonds there.” Today it’s only five percent, according to Freiesleben. The rough diamond business is still going strong. But recent developments are more of a cause for concern.”

Globalization and technical progress cannot be stopped – and the industry is trying to calm things down when it comes to safety: The diamond center, scene of the almost brilliant coup of 2003, writes on its website: “Our top priority is the safety of our customers and their products.”

Nevertheless, experts do not rule out that such a robbery could happen again: “You can install whatever you want,” says ex-investigator Peys, “there are always people who can work around it because they set it up themselves or know it , how it goes.” To this day, there is no trace of the loot from the robbery of the century.