The Statesman has a detailed article on the Belgian diamond heist.
Excerpt:
ANTWERP, Belgium: The thieves stood ankle-deep in a mess of diamonds, gold, jewelry, stocks, bonds, cash and lockboxes strewn on the vault room floor.
After outwitting security in the world's diamond-cutting capital and prying open 123 vaults, they had one unexpected problem: There was just too much loot to carry.
Two weeks later, authorities are still trying to figure out how much the thieves actually did get away with. Their rough estimate is $100 million.
That would easily make the Antwerp heist the largest safe-deposit box robbery ever %u2014 twice the 1976 hit in Beirut, Lebanon, when a guerrilla group blasted its way into the vaults of the British Bank of the Middle East and into the Guinness Book of Records.
It would also beat the largest jewel theft on record, when machine gun-toting thieves took $45 million in gems from the Carlton Hotel in Cannes on the French Riviera in 1994.
So far, authorities have three Italians and a Dutchwoman behind bars, but no clue where the loot is.
The robbery has Belgians reaching for Hollywood metaphors. "Ocean's Eleven," the daily La Libre Belgique wrote. "Mission Very Impossible," says diamond dealer Marcel Fuehrer, one of the few whose vaults were spared.
Posted by GilbertZ at 04:58 AM
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Comments:
All that money and now no way to spend it! What a waste. Probably start some modern day tresure hunting though.
Posted by: Blaine on March 11, 2003 05:15 AM
the 1oo million dollar figure includes much of the diamonds which were stolen by their owners so that they could then collect on the insurance under the cover of the theft
Posted by: Robert on May 31, 2003 09:15 PM
how did they catch the thieves without the loot? Any idea of how they got away with it?
Posted by: pearl necklace on October 8, 2003 06:42 PM
the makings of a good movie
Posted by: motorcycle insurance on November 10, 2003 01:19 AM
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