Garimpeiros (miners) at work in a river
The Village Voice has a detailed account of the adventures of one Marco Kalisch, a New York gentlemen who decided to smuggle rough diamonds from one of the most violent Amazon tribes, the Cinta Larga. It didn't go well, but it reads like a Hollywood plot.
The entrance to the 110-year-old brownstone at 2 East 12th Street, two blocks south of Union Square, isn't particularly dramatic or imposing. You have to step down to reach the front door. There's no doorman to wait on you.
Looking at it, you wouldn't imagine that the basement apartment there was at the center of a bitter court fight that ranged from the West 47th Street Diamond District deep into the Amazon jungle, and involved smuggling, bribery, corruption, a $20 billion corporation, Stone Age Indians, and a massacre.
Longtime New York diamond merchant Marco Kalisch and his wife, Mayra, owned the apartment, having lovingly restored it after combining it with the two adjacent units. They had a nice life—at least until Kalisch and his Brazilian partners tried to corner the market on rough diamonds being illegally mined on an Indian reservation in the Amazon.
A New York Operator's Trail of Blood, Bankruptcy, and Brazilian Diamonds
Single Page (for printing)
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