Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History (9 page)

And indeed it must have been, if only for the sheer volume of goods that flowed through its door. It wasn’t only diamonds that were on hand, but also millions of dollars in cash. In keeping with the old traditions, diamonds were paid for with cold hard cash, usually American dollars.

To accommodate this concentrated crush of wealth, the bourses all had underground security vaults with giant safe doors. Like the Diamond Center, the Beurs voor Diamanthandel had a LIPS door, but the other major brands were also represented. The Diamantkring kept its wealth behind a Tann door, while the Diamantclub van Antwerpen and the Vrije Diamanthandel, which were in the same building, entrusted their goods to the security of a Fichet. Considering the number of businesses in the Diamond District, vaults were surprisingly rare. Aside from the bourses and the Diamond Center, at the time that Notarbartolo was operational, the only other building within the secure zone with a vault for its customers was the CBS-Brachfeld Building, which had both a LIPS and a Fichet.

All of the vaults were highly secure, with multiple redundant security measures to prevent theft, but the highlights were the doors themselves. The LIPS door that protected the Diamond Center’s vault, for example, could only be opened with its long key and the four-number code with 100 million possible combinations. No bomb could blow it out of its moorings without bringing the whole building down.

Had he been able to visit a bourse, it would have been obvious to Notarbartolo that the vault door was perhaps the only thing a bourse had in common with the Diamond Center, aside from the wealth that flowed through its doors. Compared to the bourses, the Diamond Center was a virtual sieve, the security of its tenants’ diamonds and cash entrusted wholly—and foolishly—to electronics and heavy slabs of steel.

Notarbartolo didn’t know it, but someone else in the Diamond District had already reached that conclusion, someone who knew more about the various security features of its buildings than anyone else.

Insurance investigator Denice Oliver turned heads on the streets of the Diamond District, but not because of her crisp British accent, long blond hair, or distinct freckled complexion. She was well known because diamond dealers were all too aware that her reports to insurance agencies determined the price they would pay in premiums and how much of their business stock would be covered in the event of a theft. Those coverage amounts had a direct impact on how much business they could do. If they were covered up to $10 million, any amount of diamonds they had on hand above that would be gone with the wind should they be robbed.

The coverage amounts, however, were usually the least complicated aspect of typical insurance policies, which were tailored to individual diamond companies. Oliver’s job was to conduct a thorough review of a company’s security policies in order to analyze the risk. In this regard, her job was not so different from Notarbartolo’s.

The first thing she took into account was where the diamonds were physically located. If the diamond company applying for coverage was located inside the SADA, the likelihood that the underwriters would agree to cover the goods was much higher; if it was outside the SADA, it might have been tougher to get a good policy, or the company might have been required to pay a higher premium. Alternatively, the company could have been required to install its own hard-hitting security in its private offices, which was expensive.

Oliver inspected the building where the diamond company was located, checking to make sure that its security features complied with Belgian laws specific to the diamond industry. For example, laws required motion detectors to be anti-masking, meaning they couldn’t be subverted by being covered with a transparent film or gel. Magnetic alarms had to be polarized. A company’s security team had to be licensed and vetted with background checks.

Oliver examined all the entrances and exits, and noted the times the building opened and closed. She walked all the hallways and counted the video cameras. She interviewed everyone who could unlock the safes, and she quizzed the people with access to diamonds about their daily movements between home and work to assess how susceptible they were to kidnapping. She found out if they drove armored cars or “soft” cars. She visited the vault room and made a detailed list of its protection. She noted the brand of vault door and found out if there were seismic alarms to prevent tunneling from below. She examined the inventory and saw proof of how much business, in both volume and value, a company did each year. She learned every step the diamonds took from the moment they came into a company’s possession to the time they were sold.

Oliver was paid to think like a thief, because in the event of a theft, she was the one who analyzed the claim. Policyholders who were robbed had to prove both to the police and to Oliver that they weren’t complicit in the crime. If they hoped to see an insurance settlement, they also had to show that they had complied with the terms of their policy and that the theft wasn’t due to negligence on their part.

This scrutiny resulted in policies that could be extremely complicated, and no two of them were the same. It wasn’t unusual for insurance companies to decide that there were too many risks to offer coverage. Some business owners could get insurance for just a fraction of what they handled on a regular basis. Still others could get no insurance at all unless they implemented extensive upgrades to their personal security infrastructures.

Those who obtained insurance had a complex set of rules to follow for the insurance to be valid. These rules could range from employing security firms with up-to-date personnel records to upgrading an interoffice CCTV system so that images were digitally stored on a remote computer server rather than on flimsy videotape. Or even replacing a cheaply made safe with something like a Fichet or a LIPS. Policies could also dictate that the diamonds never leave the SADA. The diamantaire who went to lunch on the plaza near the train station forgetting that he had a pocketful of gems was out of luck if he got mugged.

An example of a typically complex policy was the one that Oliver negotiated for the Antwerp Diamond Museum, a four-story building a few blocks from the Diamond District housing a permanent exhibition of priceless jewels. The policy was so detailed that it dictated where security guards were required to stand during the day. When a visiting exhibit was stolen in a smash-and-grab in 2003, Oliver denied the museum’s claim because the guards had not been where they were supposed to be. If they had been, she argued, they would have prevented the theft or at least caught the perpetrators before they could run into the streets with a million dollars in stolen jewels.

Oliver had analyzed the security measures of most of the major buildings inside the SADA. She considered only five of them, including all the bourses, to be “acceptable” according to the standards set by the insurance underwriters she represented.

The Diamond Center at 9–11 Schupstraat was not among this group, despite being one of a handful in the Diamond District with a vault. This was primarily because Marcel Grünberger and Julie Boost never allowed Oliver to inspect the vault and analyze its security protocols. Even if they had, it’s not likely the building’s rating would have improved; just the fact that practically anyone could rent an office there and, therefore, have access to the vault, would probably have rendered it as “unacceptable” in Oliver’s book. Unlike at the bourses, no background check was required to do business from the Diamond Center, and no one asked for references. As Notarbartolo discovered, there were no requirements for prospective tenants other than the ability to pay the rent.

The only way many insurance companies would do business with diamond dealers that had offices in the Diamond Center was if they fortified their own property, or if they agreed to store only small portions of their stock in the vault.

A good example was longtime diamond insider Fay Vidal’s employer, IDH Diamonds, which occupied the entire third floor of B Block. When you stepped off the elevators, it was easy to forget you were in the Diamond Center. Unlike the grim, prison-like corridor of the fifth floor, where Notarbartolo’s office was located, the third floor was redone entirely in blond wood and bright tile. Visitors entered a small foyer where they pressed an intercom button next to IDH’s main entrance to get further.

Cameras watched the door, and a receptionist buzzed visitors into a small area that was called a “rat trap” in security parlance. There was another camera in this entryway and yet another door that had to be buzzed open to get to the inner sanctum. Inside, the open area was expensively adorned in wood with marble countertops, fresh flowers, modern artwork, and abundant recessed lighting. Glass-walled offices looked out onto the central area. Video cameras were subdued but still obvious, even in the corner conference room. It was a safe assumption that the offices were wired from top to bottom with alarms.

IDH dealt exclusively in rough uncut diamonds, and moved them in and out of Antwerp in great volume. The company bought rough from major producers throughout the world and distributed them to smaller manufacturing companies, actively doing business with some three hundred firms. On hand at any given time were millions of dollars of uncut stones, which were sorted by size and color and kept in large resealable plastic bags, which in turn were kept in several safes, one of which was the size of a kitchen refrigerator.

Though it may have looked like a graphic design firm, the company was a fortress; its security top-notch. None of its vast wealth was kept in the Diamond Center’s vault; the underground safe deposit boxes IDH rented were used to store documents and business records, not diamonds, cash, or jewelry.

The Diamond Center was considered “unacceptable” by Oliver’s standards, owing to the fact that she hadn’t been allowed to inspect it, but that didn’t mean it was impossible for businesses located there to get insurance. Some insurance companies were strict about not insuring diamonds kept in the vault, but others were happy to do so for a higher premium or by offering only limited coverage. Of course such insurance was optional, and there were many companies with offices in the Diamond Center that felt it was unnecessary. The vault, in their view, was insurance enough against theft.

After every trip to Antwerp, Notarbartolo returned to Italy smarter and more confident than when he left. As eager as he was to debrief his colleagues, he was just as eager to simply surround himself again with the comforts of his home. Living undercover in Antwerp left a lot to be desired. As his friend Antonino Falleti said later, “Belgium is great for beer, but not for anything else.”

For Notarbartolo, as for many Italians, food was among life’s top priorities, especially after the relatively bland fare on offer in Antwerp. There was an Italian restaurant on the plaza near the train station, but it was a garish mockery of Italian restaurants, all red-and-white-checkered awnings and tablecloths, with a plaster statue of an Italian chef greeting patrons at the door.

For a man whose pleasures were among the simplest—good food and the company of family and friends—Notarbartolo’s home in the Alpine foothills town of Trana was a sanctuary that was nothing like the depressing apartment he rented in Antwerp. Located between Turin and the French border, Trana shamed any Belgian village purporting to be “quaint.” Huddles of red-tile-roofed homes settled in the dells of towering hills like water in the recesses of rocky ground. The highest structure in Trana, as in the villages around it, was the church, and the town reached toward the Piedmont forests with fields of corn, grapes, cattle, and horses.

Notarbartolo’s house was nearly hidden in a small maze of rural dwellings situated on a modest hump of rolling hills. It was off the main road leading away from Trana toward the larger town of Giaveno, past haystacks carefully covered with tarps to protect against snow and rain, brick barns crumbling just so, and neighbors in rubber boots and wool sweaters burning leaves in their fields. Although his direct neighbors had horses and goats, Notarbartolo’s property was more country estate than country ranch. It wasn’t lavish, but it was more than modest. It befitted his image as a city jeweler who preferred the peace and quiet of the countryside.