A Belgian court is seeking evidence to a large-scale money laundering scheme involving the principals of Antwerp-based Omega Diamonds specialized in rough diamonds trade, De Tijd daily reported.
Ehud Laniado and Sylvain Goldberg, residents of Monaco, are suspected by the Belgian law enforcement authorities in illegal rough diamond trade for billions of euros.
In 2006, the company headed by these businessmen declared its turnover was worth €700 million, while its profit was les than one percent. Meanwhile, Omega Diamonds became the second largest company on the Antwerp diamond market.
In the course of several years Omega Diamonds was successfully trading in rough diamonds mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola, which always found a ready market.
According to the newspaper, the company bought its diamonds at dumping prices mediated by Isabel Dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s President, and her husband Sindika Dokolo, a Congolese citizen with a Danish passport and distant relative of Mobutu Sese Seko, Zair’s dictator overthrown in 1997.
Omega Diamonds’ business came into view of the Belgian tax authorities because all the company’s transactions were made exclusively via companies in Dubai, Tel Aviv and Geneva.
“By way of elaborate configurations the black money was laundered and pumped back into the economy, particularly in Belgium,” the daily said.
The Belgian court authorities were informed of the fraud involving the top managers of Omega Diamonds by one of the company’s employees.
Last year the Antwerp prosecutor's office confiscated the takings of Omega Diamonds estimated at EUR 100 million within the frames of the preliminary money laundering investigation underway and arrested the accounting reports of the company’s partner in Geneva.
Alex Shishlo, Rough&Polished European Bureau Editor in Brussels