Skip to content Skip to a section
Public record

Antwerp diamond heist (2003): Antwerp names the crew

Why is the status mixed rather than convicted? Keep Antwerp diamond heist with “Antwerp names the crew” and 15 from 2003. People were convicted, so the file is not unsolved in the Gardner sense. The goods were not returned and some defendants were tried in absentia, so it is not a fully closed restitution case. Mixed is the honest token.

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

In 2003, Antwerp diamond heist keeps 15 and “Antwerp names the crew.” Change the verb when the status changes. Keep Antwerp diamond heist with “Antwerp names the crew” and 15 from 2003. 152003

Figures to keep

Year in the file
2003
Figure that fixes it
15
Case
Antwerp diamond heist
Line that was public
Antwerp names the crew

Bhopal disaster (1984): India takes the claimsNext essayAll 1000 essays1000