Police in Belgium, France and Switzerland have arrested 33 people and recovered “a large quantity” of diamonds and cash in a joint probe into a spectacular US$50 million diamond heist at Brussels airport.
The Belgian prosecutor’s office on Wednesday said a suspected member of the eight-man gang that staged the brazen robbery three months ago had been picked up in France on Tuesday, as Swiss police made eight arrests and seized some of the missing diamonds.
“The probe led to a big police operation yesterday,” spokesman Jean-Marc Meilleur told a news conference.
In early-morning raids, mainly in the Brussels area involving about 200 officers on Wednesday, police made 24 arrests and “recovered big amounts of cash” and luxury cars, Meilleur said.
The Feb. 18 robbery at Zaventem Airport was at the time described as “one of the biggest” ever by the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC), the global dealers’ syndicate based in the Belgian port city.
A heavily armed and hooded gang pulled up in a car on a runway at around 8pm where a Brinks’ armored vehicle had just unloaded Antwerp diamonds into a Swiss passenger aircraft about to take off for Zurich.
In an operation that lasted barely 10 minutes and without a shot fired, the men forced open the hold of the plane and removed about 120 boxes of diamonds.
The gang, posing as police officers, had cut through the airport’s perimeter fence and made off with the haul of US$50 million in gems through the same breach.
Meilleur refused to say whether police suspected the gang had worked with insiders at the airport.
The suspect detained in France, 43-year-old Marc Bertolbi, has a lengthy criminal record and Belgium has asked for his extradition, he said.
Bertolbi’s lawyer Olivier Rondu later said he “formally denies any role in the heist and impatiently awaits his extradition to Belgium to be heard on the accusations.”
Bertolbi owns property in Metz, on the French Riviera and in Casablanca, Morocco.
In Morocco he runs a restaurant and a luxury car company.
In his car police found 60,000 euros (US$79,000) in cash whose origin is so far unknown.
In Geneva, a statement from the Swiss prosecutor’s office said police there had seized “a large quantity of diamonds from the spectacular armed robbery in Brussels.”
The statement went on to say “a big haul was seized, of 100,000 Swiss francs [US$107,000] in cash and a large quantity of diamonds, the value of which is currently being estimated.”
A businessman and a Geneva lawyer among the eight people being held were facing charges of dealing in stolen goods and obstructing the course of justice, the Swiss statement said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese