Ten years after the "diamond robbery of the century" in 2013 at Brussels Airport, the last four suspects have been acquitted on appeal, which means that only one of the 19 suspects of the crime was proven to be guilty. It was an almost-perfect crime.
On 13 February 2013, around eight masked and heavily armed men in police uniforms drove onto the tarmac of Brussels Airport through a hole in the fence. They held up a Brinks van loading packages onto the Swissair plane containing mostly diamonds.
Within five minutes, the group had driven their two vehicles donned with flashing police lights back through the hole they entered through. No one was hurt, the passengers of the plane were not aware of what had occurred beneath them, and the group had gotten away with 121 parcels of diamonds amounting to around €37 million. The perfection of the heist immediately led to speculation of insider help, although this was never proven.
The fence at Brussels Airport through which eight armed men crashed and drove onto the tarmac to conduct the heist. Credit: Belga/Bruno Fahy.
In 2018, 19 suspects were charged. After evidence from the prosecution was unable to hold up in court, 18 of the accused were acquitted. One man, Marc Bertoldi, was sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of €6,000, as well as the confiscation of the sum of €37.9 million – the equivalent of the stolen parcels.
In 2020, the prosecutor general appealed the acquittals of four suspects. The appeal was carried out and the court has now ruled that "the elements of the investigation were not sufficiently precise" to establish guilt, neither for the suspects' involvement in the robbery itself nor in the preparation or reception of the stolen diamonds.
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And so, the last four suspects in the robbery of the century walk away from the trial for good. With only one man sentenced in the entire operation, the diamond robbery of the century was an almost-perfect crime.
