The Schiphol Diamond Heist

At four AM on Friday 25 February 2005, in the secure handling area at the back of the KLM cargo terminal at Schiphol Airport, a single shipping container was waiting to be loaded onto a six AM KLM flight to Tel Aviv. The container had arrived overnight from Antwerp. Its contents, according to the manifest, were uncut industrial-grade diamonds destined for the Tel Aviv diamond exchange. The estimated wholesale value was approximately one hundred and eighteen million United States dollars.

By approximately four-fifteen AM, the container had been driven off the airport in the back of a stolen KLM cargo van. The diamonds have never been recovered. The two men in the van have never been publicly identified. The Schiphol Diamond Heist remains, in absolute monetary terms, one of the largest single thefts in modern Dutch history.

The inside knowledge

The Schiphol Diamond Heist is, in the consensus of Dutch and Belgian investigators, an inside operation. The two men who drove into the cargo terminal that morning had detailed and specific knowledge that could not, by any reasonable analysis, have been obtained from public information. They knew which container held the diamonds. They knew which trolley the container would be loaded onto. They knew when the trolley would be moved from the secure handling area to the aircraft. They knew which gate of the airport perimeter was monitored only intermittently. They knew the duty roster of the security personnel in that section.

The Dutch Politie's investigation, in subsequent years, identified at least four KLM employees who, at various points, were arrested and charged in connection with information leaks to the heist team. None of those four was successfully convicted. Two were acquitted at trial. Two had charges dropped. The pattern of information transfer, however, was — by all subsequent reconstructions — internal.

The van

They drove in. In a KLM cargo van — a van that had been stolen from the airport's own fleet two days earlier and had not, by the morning of the twenty-fifth, been formally reported missing. They wore KLM uniforms — uniforms that had been obtained by means the Dutch Politie were never able to fully establish, but that, by all indications, came from a former or current KLM employee. They drove through a perimeter gate that was, on Friday mornings before five AM, monitored by a single guard with a clipboard.

The guard later told investigators that the van had appeared, in every observable respect, to be a routine pre-dawn cargo movement. The uniforms looked correct. The van logo was correct. The driver had nodded politely. The guard had not, on a Friday morning at four AM, performed an ID check. He waved them through.

The bay

They drove to the trolley. The trolley had been positioned, by KLM's internal staff, just outside the secure handling area, in a bay where it was scheduled to be moved to the aircraft within the next forty minutes. There was, at the bay, a single security guard whose job was to remain with the trolley until the aircraft loading crew arrived.

The two men got out of the van. They drew handguns. They instructed the guard to lie face-down on the tarmac. He complied. They removed the diamond container from the trolley. The container was approximately the size of a refrigerator. It weighed, with its contents, approximately three hundred kilograms. It took both men, working together, several minutes to load it into the back of the van.

From entry through the perimeter gate to exit through the same gate, approximately seven minutes. The guard at the bay had, by the men's instruction, remained face-down for that entire period. He was not injured. He was, by his own subsequent testimony, told quietly to count to three hundred before standing up. He counted to approximately one hundred before he stood up and ran for an emergency phone. By the time the airport's internal alarm system had been activated, the van was already off the tarmac and through the perimeter gate.

The exit

They drove out through the same gate they had come in through. The same guard with the clipboard waved them through, this time on the assumption that the van was conducting a routine outbound run. The guard later said that he had noticed the van was riding lower than it had been on the way in, but that he had not regarded the difference as significant.

Within an hour, the van was found abandoned in a wooded area near the village of Halfweg, between Schiphol and Amsterdam. The diamond container was missing from the back. The diamonds, by every subsequent indication, had been transferred to a second vehicle at the abandonment site and had left the area within twenty minutes of the original heist. They were almost certainly cut down into smaller commercial-grade gems within weeks of the theft, and have entered the global wholesale market through the standard channels of stones-with-no-provenance — primarily Antwerp, Tel Aviv, and Mumbai. None has been positively re-identified.

The protocol

The Dutch insurance market absorbed the loss. KLM's cargo handling protocols were substantially overhauled in 2005 and again in 2007. The single-guard perimeter check at four AM was abolished. The high-value cargo bay was relocated and given a separate physical perimeter with its own access controls. The duty roster was made non-routine. None of which would have helped, on the twenty-fifth of February 2005, because the two men who drove through the perimeter gate that morning were, in every detectable respect, KLM employees.

There is a category of theft that depends on circumventing security from outside — climbing windows, defeating alarms, smashing display cases. The Antwerp Diamond Heist was that. The Bode Museum Big Maple Leaf was that. The Bührle Foundation was that. And then there is a category of theft that does not circumvent security at all. That walks through the front door. In the right uniform. In the right vehicle. With the right ID. Past the right guard. At the right time. The Schiphol Diamond Heist was that. The system did not fail because it was attacked. The system worked, exactly as designed. The two men who walked through it were, on that Friday morning, what the system was designed to recognise.

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Listen to the full story on The Vault, Episode 19. Stream the episode here.