A huge, 836lb emerald estimated to be worth as much as $1bn, and rumored to be cursed, will return to its home country of Brazil, a US court ruled this week.
“We are very happy with this sentence,” public prosecutor Boni de Moraes Soares told The Washington Post of choice. “We are closer than ever to returning the emeralds of Bahia to the people of Brazil.”
Kit Morrison, an Idaho merchant who is part of the group that claimed ownership of the rock, told the newspaper that he welcomed the ruling.
“I didn’t feel defeated or lost,” he said. “If you are an investor and an entrepreneur, you do everything you can to save, save and improve money and opportunity. However, you cannot control things that you are not in control of.”
The Bahia Emerald, which was mined in Brazil in 2001 and smuggled to the US, has long been the subject of a dispute over ownership.
The ruling may end its violent tour in America.
Brazil has argued that the emeralds were illegally mined and exported (AP)
The gem was carried out of the Brazilian rainforest by a group of mules, one of which was attacked by a pan. In the US, Hurricane Katrina hit a warehouse where it was stored, and a gem was stolen from a location in Los Angeles. It almost became part of a transaction involving the criminal Bernie Madoff.
The emerald was seized in Las Vegas and reached the Brazilian government in a dispute between jewelers in a Los Angeles court. Under the country’s constitution, all mineral resources in the country belong to Brazil, and a permit is required to extract emeralds.
In 2015, a California court declared that Morrison and his corporation were the rightful and bona fide owners of the emerald. However, the same year, the United States Department of Justice started a federal lawsuit to seize the stone, pending the end of the case that it was illegally mined in Brazil.
In the intervening years, the emerald was kept for safekeeping by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.
By 2021, a Brazilian court ordered the seizure of the emerald. The following year, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit demanding the return of the emerald to Brazil under a mutual legal aid agreement.