Tenant loss declarations
Ledger
Dealers listed what they said had been in the boxes. Those declarations underpin the $100 million-scale estimate and also explain why totals differ.
The strongest public evidence is judicial: convictions after a physical discard tied a tenant to the building.
The weakest is the goods themselves. Loose diamonds do not carry a public serial plate.
Exhibits
Forêt de Soignes discard
Object
Papers and tape dumped near Brussels became the investigative bridge from an emptied vault to a named tenant. The haul was not in the bag.
Building tenancy records
Document
Notarbartolo's rented office placed him inside the Diamond Centre before the weekend. Tenancy is a fact; it is not a vault tutorial.
Antwerp judgments
Court
Belgian convictions and sentences are the legal exhibits that make the status mixed rather than unsolved.
Insurance and trade estimates
Press
2003 reporting and later books repeated a round hundred-million-dollar figure. It is a scale mark, not a certified inventory.
Later interviews
Testimony
Post-prison interviews reopened disputes about who did what and how much was taken. They are evidence of controversy, not of restitution.
How strong is the record?
That a vault was emptied95
The weekend loss in the Diamond Centre is not in dispute.
Court identification75
Notarbartolo and associates were convicted; some in absentia.
Exact dollar total45
Multi-tenant boxes and press rounding keep the $100 million figure approximate.
Recovery of the stones15
Most of the haul never reappeared in public as the 2003 lot.
Evidence convicted people. It did not put a labelled pile of Antwerp stones back on a table.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.