Antwerp diamond heist (2003): Antwerp names the crew — Section 968: Antwerp names the crew

Over the weekend of 15–16 February 2003 a vault at Antwerp's Diamond Centre was emptied of stones, jewellery and cash. Leonardo Notarbartolo was convicted; most of the haul was never recovered. During the weekend of 15–16 February 2003, tenants' safe-deposit boxes in the vault of the Antwerp Diamond Centre — a building in the city's tightly policed diamond quarter — were emptied of loose diamonds, jewellery, gold and cash. Contemporary Belgian and insurance estimates clustered around $100 million, a figure that remains a 2003-order-of-magnitude mark rather than a locked inventory.

Belgian police arrested Leonardo Notarbartolo, an Italian who rented an office in the building, after rubbish discarded near Brussels yielded Diamond Centre paper and video stills. He and several associates, later nicknamed the School of Turin in English-language magazines, were tried in Antwerp. Notarbartolo received a multi-year sentence; others were convicted in absentia or later. Appeals and later interviews did not return the stones.

The status is mixed because a court named people and a building, while the goods themselves mostly never reappeared. This page records what was taken, who was convicted and what investigators did afterward. It does not describe how a vault is opened. A convicted crew and a missing inventory Rather than relying on simplified league tables or slogans, keeping the primary Antwerp diamond heist section open beside benchmark 15 (“Antwerp names the crew”) gives operators and readers a verifiable decision trail.