100 on Trial as Monstrey Case Arrives at Antwerp Court

(IDEX Online News) – Seven years after the investigation started, the Monstrey case is at court. The prosecution is charging 36 diamond companies and 96 people on various counts, main case being fraud.

The case that rocked the Belgian diamond sector started in October 2005 when Belgium's police seized goods from a Monstrey Worldwide Services armored truck at Brussels airport, making a number of arrests.

In the early morning hours of the following day, it raided Monstrey's offices in Antwerp, mainly confiscating company records.

That started a long lasting series of police raids on diamond firms in the city. A year later, for example, police raided the offices of at least five diamond dealers in Antwerp as part of what it described as an investigation into suspected money laundering. Authorities said that the information for the investigation stemmed from the Monstrey case.

Antwerp's daily Gazet, claims that the prosecution has invested heavily in sifting through Monstrey's systems and thousands of bank accounts in its hunt for hundreds of millions of allegedly fraudulent money.

The case presented to the court discusses €66.7 million.

Eleven of Monstrey's employees are charged with running a courier service that transferred diamonds and jewelry without proper legal disclosure.