But again it raises the question of how serious the EU and its member states are about taking on the smugglers. For the good burghers of the Antwerp trade, an aggressive anti-smuggling drive is the last thing they need. A brief tour of the diamond area, noting the preponderance of Asian traders and businesses with names like Abraham Jewellery or Albert Rozenthal, discloses why Flemish ultra-rightists rub their hands at any opportunity to attack the gemstone trade. The Diamond High Council, the industry body, is anxious to put both scandals and traditional secrecy behind it and reinvent the quarter as a responsible and vital player in Belgium's economy. The quarter has been renovated, with a fibre optic cable connecting all premises and bourses for security and communications purposes.
Television cameras are everywhere, and guards sit in cabins at the main entrances.
A vast new diamond exchange building is planned. For the Belgian authorities, enforcing the Unita embargo calls for a balancing act. Antwerp's traders, with their profits under pressure, their Vlaams Blok enemies making hay, their accounts under scrutiny and their tax breaks under threat from Brussels harmonisation plans, may declare any strict enforcement to be the last straw and pack their bags for Tel Aviv or Bombay two booming rival diamond centres. It has happened before. A change in British value added tax policy on uncut stones during the early 1980s initiated a steady decline of Hatton Garden as a gemstone centre.