This was to be the heist of the Millennium…

Published on Tuesday 19 February 2002 00:00

In the dark heart of Africa in the jungle- strewn interior of the Democratic Republic of Congo lies the tough mineral trading town of Mbuji- Mayi – one of the most impossibly remote places in the world. But for the 30,000 diamond prospectors whoforage a living in the midst of the jungle there is nowhere else they would rather be. The Congo basin is the home of the world’s most flawless diamonds.

In the spring of 1992, the settlement, 500 miles south- west of the Congo river, was under siege as the former Republic of Zaire collapsed under a litany of violent unrest. Amid this bloody background of tribal warring, two of the town’s 30,000 diamond prospectors finally got lucky. During a routine dig in a dried- up river bed three miles outside the hill province, two “ pickers”, the poorest miners who scrape a meagre living digging shallow holes, saw something glinting in the dirt – it was a huge rough- hewn diamond.

Ten years after the ancient river bed gave up its priceless secret the same diamond would become the reason that five London criminalswere sent to Belmarsh Prison for a total of 71 years. The diamond in the floor of the Congolese jungle was the Millennium Star, the most famous diamond in the world.

Last night an Old Bailey jury found London gangsters William Cockran, 48, Raymond Betson, Aldo Ciarrocchi, 31, and Robert Adams guilty of conspiracy to rob the 200 million diamond from the Millennium Dome in November 2000. A fifth man, Kevin Meredith, was also found guilty of the lesser charge of conspiracy to steal. Their pursuit of the Millennium Star would lead them to ruin and enter their exploits into Britain’s criminal hall of shame forever.

The trail of the Millennium Star from the Congo to the west was not particularly unusual. The pickers who found it may have been illiterate but, having dug the same river beds and mountains since the age of ten, they knew that had come across something special.

They carried the huge stone to town. Ignoring the Lebanese middle- men whose shops line the main streets of Mbuji- Mayi, they headed for the biggest money- men around – De Beers.

In the local office the Dutch office manager practically fainted with shock as the miners strolled into the office with broad smiles and a filthy rag. Before him was a diamond still caked with dirt. In the rough it looked like a jagged hunk of glass, shaped a bit like the tip of a spear, but it was ice cold to the touch. The Dutchman picked up his satellite phone and called De Beers European headquarters in Antwerp.

According to local folklore the pickers slept outside the De Beers office as they awaited the verdict on the gem’s worth. Within 24 hours the men had agreed a fee in the region of 4.2 million. The sum was paid in full, in cash and De Beers offered to set up a bank account for the pickers.

The office manager placed the gem in his Mbuji- Mayi safe for about ten days before receiving the all- clear to transport the huge diamond under heavy guard to South Africa and then Holland for cutting. By thenDe Beers had already christened the gem “ The Millennium Star” – it was one of the most valuable diamonds ever discovered. It weighed an astonishing 777 carats.

In Antwerp, De Beers experts studied the Millennium Star for six months before even beginning to make the cuts that would transform it from a rough diamond to one of the most prized in the world.

After two years of attention from the finest cutters in the world a 203- carat diamond worth 200 million was presented to the De Beers boardroom. The diamond had been cut to maximise its beauty rather than its weight, giving it the highest colour possible.

In the Dutch diamond capital the stone’s fate had already been decided. The off- cuts would be sold for profit while the Millennium Star itself would travel the world promoting De Beers as the world’s finest diamond producer. The Millennium Star would indeed become the most famous diamond in the world, although not for the reason De Beers had hoped.

In February 2000, the British government announced that De Beers had offered the Millennium Star as a centrepiece for the Millennium Dome, which had been suffering under a storm of bad publicity. Downing Street was understandably delighted, believing that the world’s most valuable cut diamond would help attract huge crowds to the Dome. The diamond would be held in a specially constructed vault in the Dome’s Money Zone flanked by a display holding 11 other exceptionally rare “ blue” stones totalling 118 carats and worth a combined total of 100 million.

In a small village outside Tunbridge Wells, news of the decision to house the valuable diamonds in the Dome, effectively a huge prefabricated tent, attracted the interest of Ray Betson, a career criminal with a string ofsuccessf ul armed robberies and audacious drug deals to his name.

Betson, 39, had told friends he was keen to retire and set up home in southern Spain, the Mecca for Britain’s criminal fraternity. For Betson the lure of the Millennium Star was irresistible – a successful robbery of the Dome would not only mean a life of luxury, but also the legendary reputation among his underworld associates that he so badly coveted.

Betson knew his history too – stealing the Millennium Star would also smash the world record for a gem robbery, at that time still held by a gang who stole jewellery worth 30 million from the Carlton Hotel in Cannes in August 1994.

Betson was also in debt and had just lost 120,000 after two of his illegal cigarettes shipments were intercepted by Customs & Excise. He needed to pull off a major heist and he already knew the team that could help him.

In March 2000, with a raid on the Dome already loosely planned in his head, Betson visited his best friend and fellow criminal, Bill Cockran. Cockran, from Catford in London, was known to Scotland Yard as a “highly dangerous individual” who had been involved in serious crime, including armed robberies, for many years. Betson installed Cockran as his right- hand man and instructed himto find a way to break into the high- security cabinet that housed the Millennium Star.

Betson also recruited a “communications man”, Aldo Ciarrocchi, 31, to handle two sophisticated scanners which could monitor radio frequencies used by the police. With Ciarrocchi on board, the ring- leaders knew they also needed a “ strong arm” to complement Ciarrocchi’s technological know- how.

For Betson there was only one man for the job. Bob Adams, 57, a powerful London bank robber, had just been released from prison on remand and would be the team’s “hammer man”, employed to batter open the supposedly impregnable jewel cabinets using a nail gun and a sledge- hammer.

The final member of the gang would be Kevin Meredith, 34, considered an outsider by the rest of the team and recruited just a month before the attempted heist.

A chartered boat skipper, Meredith’s role would be to steer the team’s getaway speedboat across the Thames to a waiting van with false registration plates driven by Terence Millman (who later died in prison before facing trial).

With his plan unfolding at a rate of knots, Betson knew he had to keep things tight and only four other men knew about the ambitious plot – two close relatives of Betson himself and two major London criminals recruited to set up an international buyer for the diamonds. Unbeknown to Betson, one of the men was a police informer.

The planning behind the robbery was meticulous. The gang visited the Dome on regular occasions plotting their getaway and assessing the strength of security around the Dome itself. While they posed as tourists, Betson and his team were amazed how few security guards were positioned around the vault.

They had no inkling of the fact that, even in those early days, their every move was being filmed by undercover Flying Squad officers also posing as tourists.

Betson realised he needed a heavy vehicle to carry his four- man team into the perimeter of the Dome complex before smashing the gates leading to the Money Zone where the diamonds were held.

A JCB digger was chosen as the ideal mobile battering ram – because of all the building work in the area the robbers believed it could take them straight into the site without arousing suspicion.

The bulldozer was stolen to order in TunbridgeWells and fitted with fake licence plates that matched legitimate numbers belonging to an identical machine. Over the next fortnight most of the fittings and control systems for the digger arm were stripped so it could accommodate three men hidden under a blanket as it careered towards the Dome.

On 6 October 2000, under the watchful eyes of more than 100 undercover police officers, the team moved in, but their attempt was called off at the last minute after the speedboat developed engine problems. Disappointed, the police backed off and waited. The gang’s second bid, on6 November, also filmed by the Flying Squad, was aborted after Meredith decided the Thames tides made the getaway impossible. The police withdrew again.

But 24 hours later, on the morning of 7 November, the raid finally went ahead. At 8: 45am they boarded the JCB. Clad in gas masks and body armour, the gang were also armed with two and a half pints of ammonia, described by medical experts as “ a vicious weapon of assault”. They also carried smoke grenades, stink bombs, bolt cutters, and a hi- tech scanning equipment to intercept police radio messages.

On the other side of the Thames, Meredith started up the engines of his repaired Pilton GGS 160 speedboat, capable of a top speed of 55 mph, which had been hired from a London brokers a month earlier by Betson using the false name Tom Diamond.

As the JCB rumbled towards the Dome, the gang penetrated the structure’s perimeter fencing and continued towards the base of the Dome, reaching a top speed of 60 miles an hour.

According to plan, the robbers crashed through the wall of the Dome and straight into the Money Zone which was only 20 yards from the De Beers vaults. The gang leapt from their reinforced JCB, throwing smoke bombs to cause confusion and divert the attention of the security guards. To their left terrified tourists caught up in themayhemdived for cover believing terrorists were mounting an attack on the Dome.

With stage one complete, Betson knew his most difficult problem would now be breaking open the diamond display cases themselves. The cases had been specially built by De Beers at a cost of more than 50,000 each to withstand the force of a 60- ton ram- raid.

Cracking the cases had been left to Adams, who hit upon a simple but ingenious solution later described as “ brilliant” by De Beers’s own head of security. His plan was to weaken the glass with three shots from a powerful Hilti nailgun, allowing him to then use a sledgehammer to break open the glass while it was still warm.

The plan worked perfectly, putting the world’s most fabulous collection of diamonds within arms’ reach in just 27 seconds. But as Adams prepared another blow, the robbers’ plan collapsed around

them, as the robbers heard the words “ Strike, Strike, Strike”. One hundred police officers dressed as cleaners and Dome staff pulled out collapsible rifles from bin bags, yelling: “ Armed police, get down on the floor”. The astonished robbers fell to their knees in terror. It was all over in 20 seconds.

In a final bitter twist the diamond that the robbers had come within inches of stealing was, in fact, a mere glass replica of the Millennium Star. The real stone had been safely hidden deep in the vaults of a top London bank.

Back in Mbuji- Mayi the diamond pickers and traders carry on searching for the next Millennium Star despite the fact that the fate of the two men who discovered the original remains unknown. According to De Beers they were lucky and shared their money with their village. According to local rumour, the stone was cursed and the prospectors were kidnapped and murdered by an army general loyal to the deposed former dictator of Zaire, President Mobutu Sese Seko. What is certain is the men have disappeared off the face of the Earth and their 4.2million remains nowhere to be seen.