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The 180,000-carat Bahia emerald, one of the world’s most famous gemstones, has been in the custody of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for more than 15 years and has been subject to more than a decade of feuds, disagreements, and court battles. In the midst of this, its final fate is uncertain.
Now, a federal judge has ruled that the smuggled stones must be returned to their home country of Brazil.
According to Brazilian authorities, the Bahia emerald is one of the largest, if not the largest emerald ever discovered. It weighs about 836 pounds, according to court documents.
Estimates of its value vary, but are as high as $925 million.
According to Brazilian authorities, the emerald was discovered in the country’s beryl mine in 2001 and then smuggled to the United States. It reportedly survived being submerged in underwater storage during the 2005 Hurricane Katrina floods.
The jewelry eventually ended up in the hands of an investor, who reported it missing from a safe in South El Monte several years later, according to a previous Times report. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s investigators then tracked the emerald to a storage facility in Las Vegas, but were unable to identify the owner of the jewelry and seized it.
The stone’s long and sordid history has even given rise to rumors that it may be cursed.
For more than a decade, about a dozen individuals and several companies have been fighting in California Superior Court to prove they are the rightful owners of the stone. Meanwhile, Brazil’s government is waging its own long legal battle in federal court to get the jewels back.
Thursday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton invalidates U.S. ownership claims and clears the way for the emeralds to be returned to Brazil.
“After this long and drawn-out battle, we are excited about the Federal Court’s ruling on this matter. This is the right outcome and a major step towards repatriating the Bahia Emerald to its rightful owner, the State of Brazil.” “I believe that,” Ross said. John Nadorenko, an Angeles-based attorney who represented Brazil in the federal lawsuit, told the Times on Friday.
Nadorenko remembers the day he received a letter from the Brazilian government asking for help in repatriating 836 pounds of emeralds. He thought it was a scam and threw it in the trash.
However, the letter turned out to be genuine, as did Brazil’s ownership claims. Nadorenko spent the next ten years on one of the wildest legal adventures of his career.
In 2014, Brazil asked Nadorenko’s company Mayer Brown to help recover the stones. In 2015, the company persuaded the U.S. Department of Justice to file a lawsuit in federal court to seize the emeralds following the resolution of criminal charges in Brazil.
In 2017, the Brazilian government convicted two Brazilian residents of illegally smuggling emeralds into the United States. After the two lost their appeals in 2021, Brazil ordered the confiscation of the Bahia emeralds.
In 2022, the Department of Justice filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to order the emeralds to be forfeited under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between the United States and Brazil. Walton approved the motion Thursday.
If no appeal is filed, the next step will be for the U.S. government to schedule a formal return ceremony to hand over the stone to Brazil.
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