BRUSSELS — Belgian police were on the hunt Tuesday for thieves who made off with diamonds worth millions of dollars in a spectacular robbery at the country’s main airport.
The heavily armed men, who were posing as police officers, snatched an estimated 120 parcels from a diamond shipment that was being loaded from a Brink’s security truck onto a Switzerland-bound plane Monday evening, prosecutors said.
No shots were fired and no one was injured during the robbery, which lasted about five minutes.
The stolen gems, a mix of rough and cut stones, had arrived at the airport by road from the Belgian port city of Antwerp, the world’s biggest diamond-trading center, and were to be flown on a scheduled passenger flight to Zurich, an important transit point in the global diamond business.
The gems are said to be worth about $50 million, Antwerp World Diamond Center spokesman Caroline De Wolf said. Early media reports had mentioned a value of $467 million.
The airport would say only that “valuable goods” had been stolen, while prosecutors said they could not confirm the value of the gems.
De Wolf said most of the loot was from Antwerp, a city in northern Belgium that is a global diamond hub. It was not immediately clear who the recipient was meant to be.
The thieves broke through a fence at the Zaventem airport with two vehicles at 7:47 p.m., the airport said in a statement. The group targeted an area of fence between two construction sites, prosecutors said.
The black vehicles had flashing blue lights and each carried four masked men brandishing machine guns, prosecution spokesman Ine Van Wymersch said in Brussels. The men were wearing uniforms similar to those used by police, she added.
“This was not a random robbery. It was well-prepared. These were professionals,” said Anja Bijnens, another spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, adding that that not all the shipment had been stolen.
The robbers held up the security personnel and the plane’s pilot and co-pilot before forcing their way into the loading area of the aircraft, according to a prosecution statement.
The passengers on the 8:05 p.m. commercial flight did not notice anything during the robbery, Bijnens said. The flight was later canceled, an airport statement said.
“They saw nothing,” Bijnens said of the passengers. The thieves “never fired a shot. They never injured anyone.”
The thieves fled back “through the damaged fence,” airport personnel said. A burned vehicle later found in the town of Zellik, on the Brussels outskirts, is believed to be one of the getaway cars, Bijnens said.
Belgian media reported that Monday’s robbery was the fifth of its kind at the Brussels airport in 18 years.
The facility’s security service is not to blame, the ACV trade union told the Belga news agency, arguing that “more resources” are needed to improve safety at Zaventem.
De Wolf also told Belga that “serious questions” were raised by the fact that “a car can get so easily onto the airfield.”
But airport officials on Tuesday afternoon argued that it already “meets the stringent national and international security standards set by national and European Union authorities.”
“Compliance is monitored on a regular basis,” they said in a statement on the airport’s Facebook page. “But this obviously was an armed robbery by a professional gang.”
The theft delivers a blow to Antwerp’s role as a diamond center at a time when the city, a diamond-trading and cutting hub for centuries, is struggling to fend off a challenge from low-wage diamond cutters in India and elsewhere.
“The fact that this happened is a big problem for us. We have our No. 1 position to defend. Security is obviously very important,” De Wolf said. “We are shocked by the fact this could ever happen. We are all wondering: How is this possible?”
Diamonds traded in Antwerp last year had a total value of $51.9 billion, accounting for 80 percent of the world’s roughdiamond trade and 50 percent of trade in polished gems.
Helvetic Airways, the Swiss airline that owns the plane targeted in the robbery, said security for valuable cargo is normally the responsibility of the airport and the security company hired to transport the shipment to the plane. An airline spokesman in Zurich declined to comment further.
Diamonds purchased in Antwerp for cutting or sale abroad are usually taken the 27 miles to the Brussels airport under police escort in armored security vans, and the thieves took advantage of a brief gap in the tightly guarded procedure during the loading of cargo.
A decade ago, Antwerp was hit by one of the biggest diamond heists in history. Robbers disabled an alarm system and took precious stones, jewels, gold and securities from 123 of the 160 high-security vaults at Antwerp’s Diamond Center. The loot was so abundant the thieves had to leave some of it behind, police said, estimating the 2003 robbery to be worth about $100 million at the time.
Monday’s heist was a fresh blow to Antwerp’s major industry, which prides itself on discretion and security.
“This is causing quite some unrest,” De Wolf said. “It was incredible how easily it all went. This is worrying in terms of competitiveness, since other diamond centers are ready to pounce and take over our position.” Information for this article was contributed by Alexandra Mayer-Hohdahl of Deutsche Presse-Agentur; by Andrew Higgins of The New York Times; by Aoife White and Andrew Clapham of Bloomberg News; and by Raf Casert, Juergen Baetz and Don Melvin of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/20/2013