The G Manifesto

Russia Hoarding Diamonds as Investment

Click Here for Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel

The global recession sapped demand for all kinds of commodities — like steel and grain — yet small burlap bags are still arriving by the planeload at Russia’s state-owned diamond company.

Each day, the contents of the bags spill into the stainless steel hoppers of the receiving room. The diamonds are washed and sorted by size, clarity, shape and quality; then, rather than being sent to be sold around the world, they are wrapped in paper and whisked away to a vault — about three million carats worth of gems every month.

Click Here for Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel

Russia quietly passed a milestone this year: surpassing De Beers as the world’s largest diamond producer. But the global market for diamonds is so dismal that the Alrosa diamond company, 90 percent owned by the Russian government, has not sold a rough stone on the open market since December, and has stockpiled them instead.

As a result, Russia has become the arbiter of global diamond prices. Its decisions on production and sales will determine the value of diamonds on rings and in jewelry stores for years to come, in one of the most surprising consequences of this recession.

Largely because of the jewelry bear market, De Beers’s fortunes have sunk. Short of cash, the company had to raise $800 million from stockholders in just the last six months.

The recession also coincided with a settlement with European Union antitrust authorities that ended a longtime De Beers policy of stockpiling diamonds, in cooperation with Alrosa, to keep prices up.

Though it is a major commodity producer, Russia has traditionally not embraced policies that artificially keep prices up. In oil, for example, Russia benefits from the oil cartel’s cuts in production, but does not participate in them.

Diamonds are an exception. “If you don’t support the price,” Andrei V. Polyakov, a spokesman for Alrosa, said, “a diamond becomes a mere piece of carbon.”

How the buy-in price for the stones will be set, and how the company will determine when the price goes up and down, is unclear, Mr. Malinin said.

“We have to tell people that diamonds are valuable,” he said. “We are trying to maintain the price, just as De Beers did, as all diamond producing countries do. But what we are doing is selling an illusion,” meaning a product with no utility and a price that depends on the continued sense of scarcity where there is none.

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Click Here for Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Cam’ron-Do ya Thing

Pink Panther Jewel Thief Crew

Click Here for Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief

Click Here for The G Manifesto’s The Complete Guide to Burglary

Click Here for The Man Who Robbed the Pierre: The Story of Bobby Comfort

Click Here for Secrets of a Superthief by Jack MacLean

Police in Cyprus have arrested a man on an Interpol wanted list suspected of belonging to the “Pink Panther” jewel thief gang, blamed for a string of audacious heists worldwide.

Rifat Hadziahmetovic, from Montenegro, was arrested on March 18 as he attempted to depart the east Mediterranean island on a forged Bulgarian passport, Cyprus police said.

A local magistrates’ court on Friday remanded the suspect in custody until March 31, when a hearing will start for his extradition to Spain, police spokesman Christos Andreou said.

“He was initially detained on suspicion of possession of forged documents, but further inquiries revealed he was wanted by Interpol for being a suspected part of the Pink Panther gang,” Andreou said.

Click Here for Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief

He was also identified by a leg tattoo, he told Reuters.

The Pink Panthers are believed to have staged some 120 attacks on luxury stores in around 20 countries, since their first robbery in London’s exclusive Mayfair district in 2003.

They pulled off one of their most spectacular heists last December, when they walked away with up to 85 million euros ($114 million) worth of goods after entering the Harry Winston jewellers in central Paris disguised as women.

Global police agency Interpol said fingerprint checks positively identified Hadziahmetovic, 41, wanted for armed robberies across the world, including in Bahrain, Japan, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.

Click Here for Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief

The Pink Panther nickname refers to the debonair gentleman diamond robber from the 1960s film. Interpol believes the group may have up to 200 members, many with military experience.

Source

Click Here for Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

AZ – Success Freestyle

The Madagascar Sapphire Report

Click Here for The Sapphire Sea: A Gemstone Thriller

A rampant desire to accumulate wealth pulses through Ilakaka’s streets. There is no bank, yet it is home to businesses worth millions of dollars.

It was back in 1998 that the discovery of major sapphire deposits in the hot and rocky plains of Madagascar’s southern interior sparked an extraordinary scramble for wealth.

So abundant were sapphires that they could simply be sifted from the river bed or picked up from the hot dusty earth. Fifty per cent of the world’s sapphires are said to come from this lawless region.

Click Here for The Sapphire Sea: A Gemstone Thriller

Over time people have been forced to dig deeper in their searches. Mineshafts wide enough for one man to descend are dotted around like lunar craters.

Beneath the surface men dig in tiny cramped caves, labouring in subterranean heat, the hope of finding sapphires tempered by the constant threat of a collapsed shaft. Desperation and greed mean many are killed or die in the pursuit of the precious gems.

People & Power takes a look at the extraordinary story of Ilakaka and the ‘sapphire rush’ through the eyes of those effected; gem dealers, mine owners, police chiefs and miners, those who risk their lives on a daily basis in search of that one stone that they hope will transform their impoverished lives.

What is life like in Ilakaka amidst the whirlwind pursuit of profit?

Madagascar Saphire Report Part I

Madagascar Saphire Report Part II

Source

Click Here for The Sapphire Sea: A Gemstone Thriller

Sapphires: Great to Heist.

But think twice about buying them for your wack girlfriend.

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

EPMD Crossover

Leonardo Notarbartolo: The World’s Biggest Diamond Heist

Click Here for ABC News Primetime Antwerp Diamond Heist

Click Here for G Manifesto: The Complete Guide to Burglary

Click Here for How to Swoop Girls and Influence People (Australia Style)

Excellent story of the Heist of the Antwerp Diamond Center:

It was February 16, 2003 — a clear, frozen Sunday evening in Belgium. Notarbartolo took the E19 motorway out of Antwerp. In the passenger seat, a man known as Speedy fidgeted nervously, damp with sweat. Notarbartolo punched it, and his rented Peugeot 307 sped south toward Brussels. They hadn’t slept in two days.

Speedy scanned the traffic behind them in the side-view mirror and maintained a tense silence. Notarbartolo had worked with him for 30 years—they were childhood buddies—but he knew that his friend had a habit of coming apart at the end of a job. The others on the team hadn’t wanted Speedy in on this one—they said he was a liability. Notarbartolo could see their point, but out of loyalty, he defended his friend. Speedy could handle it, he said.

Click Here for ABC News Primetime Antwerp Diamond Heist

And he had. They had executed the plan perfectly: no alarms, no police, no problems. The heist wouldn’t be discovered until guards checked the vault on Monday morning. The rest of the team was already driving back to Italy with the gems. They’d rendezvous outside Milan to divvy it all up. There was no reason to worry. Notarbartolo and Speedy just had to burn the incriminating evidence sitting in a garbage bag in the backseat.Notarbartolo pulled off the highway and turned onto a dirt road that led into a dense thicket. The spot wasn’t visible from the highway, though the headlights of passing cars fractured through the trees. Notarbartolo told Speedy to stay put and got out to scout the area.

He passed a rusty, dilapidated gate that looked like it hadn’t been touched since the Second World War. It was hard to see in the dark, but the spot seemed abandoned. He decided to burn the stuff near a shed beside a small pond and headed back to the car.

Click Here for The G Manifesto’s The Complete Guide to Burglary

Click Here for The Man Who Robbed the Pierre: The Story of Bobby Comfort

Click Here for Secrets of a Superthief by Jack MacLean

When he got there, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Speedy had lost it. The contents of the garbage bag was strewn amongst the trees. Speedy was stomping through the mud, hurling paper into the underbrush. Spools of videotape clung to the branches like streamers on a Christmas tree. Israeli and Indian currency skittered past a half-eaten salami sandwich. The mud around the car was flecked with dozens of tiny, glittering diamonds. It would take hours to gather everything up and burn it.

Click Here for ABC News Primetime Antwerp Diamond Heist

“I think someone’s coming,” Speedy said, looking panicked.

Notarbartolo glared at him. The forest was quiet except for the occasional sound of a car or truck on the highway. It was even possible to hear the faint gurgling of a small stream. Speedy was breathing fast and shallow—the man was clearly in the midst of a full-blown panic attack.

“Get back in the car,” Notarbartolo ordered. They were leaving. Nobody would ever find the stuff here.

The job was done.

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Click Here for ABC News Primetime Antwerp Diamond Heist

Thanks to Glengarry Glenpoon, Ryan, and everyone else who sent this to me.

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The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

It’s All Right by The Impressions

Big Jewel heist in Paris from Harry Winston’s boutique

(Click Here for Criminality in The Luxury Sector)

Click Here for The G Manifesto’s The Complete Guide to Burglary

Click Here for The Man Who Robbed the Pierre: The Story of Bobby Comfort

Click Here for Secrets of a Superthief by Jack MacLean

A savvy band of jewel thieves, armed with guns and some posing as women, have struck in the heart of the city’s golden triangle of luxury shops, stealing more than €85 million worth of diamonds, rings and watches from a posh Harry Winston boutique.

The brazen $108 million theft Thursday, which some French newspapers quickly branded the heist of the century, reflected a savvy knowledge of the jewelry business, happening during the peak of the holiday season, when jewelry stocks are plentiful.

It was the second time that the boutique on Avenue Montaigne was robbed in the past 14 months and came a little more than a week after Cartier in Paris lost a €635,000 diamond ring to a veiled woman posing as a tourist from Qatar who switched the real gem for a fake.

Robbers in drag steal $100M in jewel heist

The police said that at least four people were involved in the robbery of Harry Winston, which is on a street of deluxe shops near the Champs Élysées that is crowded with boutiques for Chanel, Dior and Gucci. Around closing time at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, the thieves entered and confronted 15 employees. At least two of the robbers were dressed in wigs and women’s clothes, while a fourth accomplice apparently waited outside as the getaway driver, Lévy said.

The boutique has already weathered an earlier audacious robbery of €10 million of goods, in October 2007. At the time, the company offered a €500,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of its diamonds. In April, Harry Winston posted a pre-tax gain of $13.5 million from the settlement of its insurance claim in that earlier robbery.

To date, the record for jewelry theft remains a heist in February 2003, when thieves reaped €100 millions in diamonds from the vaults at Antwerp’s diamond exchange.

Source

All in all a A-.

Points taken away for dressing in drag. Which is only slightly better than dressing in Ed Hardy Shirts.

You should wear custom Savile Row suits on a heist.

Still, not a bad day at the office.

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA El Campeón De La Gente
The Guide to Getting More Out of Life
The Guide to Getting More Out of Travel
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Az feat.Jadakiss & Cassidy-In