For more than 15 years, one of the world’s most famous gemstones — the 180,000-carat Bahia Emerald — has been held in Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department custody, its ultimate fate uncertain amid more than a decade of discord, disagreement and courtroom wrangling.
Now, a federal judge has ruled that the smuggled stone should return to its home country of Brazil.
According to Brazilian authorities, the Bahia Emerald is one of the largest emeralds, if not the largest, ever discovered. Court documents say it weighs approximately 836 pounds.
Estimates of its worth vary but are as high as $925 million.
The emerald, Brazilian authorities say, was discovered in a beryl mine in the country in 2001 and later smuggled to the U.S. There, it reportedly survived flooding from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 while submerged in an underwater vault.
The gem eventually ended up in the hands of an investor, who reported it missing from a South El Monte vault a few years later, according to previous Times coverage. Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators subsequently tracked the emerald to a Las Vegas vault, but since they could not sort out who owned the gem, they confiscated it.
The stone’s long and sordid history gave rise to rumors that it could even be cursed.
For more than a decade, about 10 individuals and a handful of corporations have duked it out in California Superior Court trying to prove they are the rightful owners of the stone. Meanwhile, the Brazilian government has engaged in its own lengthy legal battle in federal court to try to repatriate the gemstone.
Thursday’s ruling, issued by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, supersedes claims of American ownership and paves the way for the emerald to return to Brazil.
“After this long, long battle, we’re thrilled with the federal court’s ruling in this matter, which we believe is the right result and is a major step toward repatriating the Bahia Emerald to its rightful owner: the country of Brazil,” Los Angeles-based attorney John Nadolenco, who represented Brazil in the federal case, told The Times on Friday.
Nadolenco recalls the day he received a letter from the Brazilian government asking for his help repatriating an 836-pound emerald. He threw it in the trash, assuming it was a scam.
However, the letter proved to be real — as did Brazil’s claim to ownership. Nadolenco spent the following 10 years on one of the wildest legal adventures of his career.
Brazil enlisted Nadolenco’s firm, Mayer Brown, to assist in retrieving the stone in 2014. In 2015, the firm convinced the U.S. Department of Justice to initiate a federal court action to seize the emerald following the resolution of criminal prosecutions in Brazil.
In 2017, the Brazilian government convicted two Brazilian residents of illegally smuggling the emerald into the United States. After the two men lost an appeal in 2021, Brazil issued a forfeiture order for the Bahia Emerald.
In 2022, the Justice Department filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia under the mutual legal assistance treaty between the United States and Brazil, asking the court to order the emerald’s forfeiture. Walton approved this motion Thursday.
If no appeal is filed, the next step would be to schedule a formal repatriation ceremony for the U.S. government to turn the stone over to Brazil.