Four people who allegedly masterminded and executed the biggest gem robbery in the history of Antwerp, the diamond-cutting capital of the world, have been arrested, Belgian police said yesterday.
The thieves emptied 123 of Antwerp’s 160 supposedly impregnable diamond safes of tens of millions of pounds worth of jewels. The security guards saw nothing and alarm systems failed to sound, fuelling speculation that the theft was an inside job.
Yesterday that theory appeared to be confirmed.
Police said they had arrested three Italian men and a Dutch woman in connection with the theft, and that the suspects had rented office space in the building where the vaults are housed only a few months ago.
Local media also reported that CCTV video tapes which should have shown who committed the crime had been switched and replaced with older security footage.
That, the Belgian papers suggested, meant that the four must have bribed the security guards, a tactic also employed by thieves who struck Antwerp in the mid-1990s.
Ten days after the heist, the police are still unable to give a reliable estimate of the value of the stolen gems, none of which have been recovered. The police are also refusing to reveal the identity of the four, who are being held in solitary confinement.
”They are being held on suspicion of being co-authors in the theft,” was all Leen Nuyts, a representative for Antwerp’s public prosecutor would say yesterday.
However an interesting detail which could explain why the thieves struck when they did — just after Valentine’s day — has come to light.
A diamond ring worth â,¬1-million (£684,000), which a wealthy customer had considered buying for his partner, is among the valuables stolen. – Guardian Unlimited Â