On 16 August, the Liberian mines and energy minister, Jenkins Dunbar, testified before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations’ hearing on conflict diamonds, and challenged Britain to a duel of transparency. ?The Belgium Diamond Report of 2000,? Dunbar told the Americans, ?shows that Great Britain, a non-diamond producing country, exported to Belgium more than 40,000,000 carats of diamonds valued at more than US$2.8 billion in 1999 alone. The 1998 export figures are of similar magnitude. From where does the UK get all these diamonds?? We asked our Brussels correspondent Francois Misser to find out, and this is his report.

The UK and America are leading the campaign against Liberia, accusing it of supplying the Sierra Leonean RUF rebels with arms in return for diamonds. On 13 June, the UK’s minister for Europe, Keith Vaz, took the offensive to Brussels where he managed to persuade his EU colleagues to block a ?35m EU aid package to Liberia on account of the diamond allegations.

As a way of substantiating their claims, Keith Vaz and other UK diplomats circulated among their European colleagues a report showing that Liberia exported on average six million carats of diamonds over the 1994-1996 period, whereas its domestic annual capacity is only 100,000 to 150,000 carats.

But that wasn’t exactly a scoop. The figures came from a late 1999 report by the Canadian NGO, Partnership Africa. In fact, in the diamond industry, nobody denies that such smuggling take (or have taken) place. Everyone, however, agrees that the figures are grossly exaggerated, and do not even make sense.

Indeed, the six million carats is four times higher than the combined mining capacity of both Liberia and Sierra Leone as estimated by the authoritative De Beers’ Central Selling Organisation.

Moreover, on several occasions, insiders have told the Paris-based newsletter, Africa Energy and Mining, that during the mid-1990s, it was common practice for traders who imported rough or semi-rough gems from Siberia, (repeat, Siberia) beyond the quotas agreed by De Beers and Russia, to declare the gems as ?Liberian stones? to Belgian customs as a way of avoiding the 0.3% tax on non-African imports ? a fact reported by New African in our September 2000 issue (p10-11).

This said, there are suspicions about Sierra Leonean gems being smuggled through Liberia to Switzerland. This is, at least, the view of the Swiss Secretary of State for the Economy whose department recorded a spectacular rise in Liberian gem exports from US$7.5m in 1998 to $16m in 1999, and $29m for the first half of this year.

One reason for the suspicion is that the value of Liberian exports to Switzerland this year suggests a quantity higher than what Liberia can, or has the capacity to, produce. Yet, this is pure deduction; and the Liberian foreign minister, Monie Captan, has on various occasions challenged the Western powers to offer ?concrete evidence? to back up their allegations ? evidence that could be examined by a panel of investigators.

The problem is that evidence is difficult to get. The diamond industry itself claims that the technology and method of identifying the source of rough diamonds are not sufficiently advanced to determine with 100% certainty the origin of individual diamonds. Therefore, it is difficult to distinguish between Liberian and Sierra Leonean gems.

But the controversy is far from over. Stephen Pattison, head of the British Foreign Office’s UN department, told the Associated Press (AP) recently that the Liberian president, Charles Taylor, ?authorised the establishment of a cover company in Liberia ? the Liberian Investment Corporation ? with a subsidiary in Burkina Faso, to hide RUF mining operations in Sierra Leone?.

The Liberians struck back when their mines minister, Jenkins Dunbar, testified on 16 August before the US Senate Committee hearing on conflict diamonds. ?More importantly,? he said, ?the Belgium Diamond Report of 2000 shows that Great Britain, a non-diamond producing country, exported to Belgium more than 40,000,000 carats of diamonds valued at more than US$2.8 billion in 1999 alone. The 1998 export figures are of similar magnitude. From where does the UK get all these diamonds??

Earlier, Dunbar had told the Americans: ?Recent statistics (2000) show that the export of Sierra Leone diamonds has increased considerably over the 1999 export figures. There is a paradox with these very statistics. For instance, how does one explain the fact that the diamond producing areas in Sierra Leone are under the control of the rebels and yet, at the same time, official government exports of diamonds increase?

?The only logical explanation is that the very government is acquiring large quantities of diamonds from rebels and labelling them as official government production. Additionally, the Kamajor militia, [which is] unaccountable and under no control whatsoever, are in charge of the Kono diamond fields and are involved in extensive mining activities. To whom do they sell their diamonds?

?It would not require a thesis to pinpoint the buyer of Kamajor diamonds, since the militia was created by the deputy defence minister of Sierra Leone, Samuel Hinga Norman.?

In other words, Dunbar was challenging international opinion not to apply double standards, because in the view of Liberia, there are reasons to investigate the trade flow between the UK and Belgium, and whether it involves illegal gems, including from Sierra Leone.

UK exports to Belgium

It is a well-known fact that most of UK exports to Belgium are De Beers’ Central Selling Organisation sales, although the Diamond High Council (DHC) statistics (the regulatory body of the Belgian industry) quoted by Dunbar did not specify the exact proportion of De Beers diamonds in that huge package.

Nevertheless, earlier DHC annual reports provide this detail: In 1998, UK exports to Belgium amounted to a fairly similar amount of 39.5m carats, out of which only 28.1m carats were De Beers sales; and 11.4m carats were sales from other traders.

In 1997, according to the DHC report, there was a similar gap (10.3m carats) between the De Beers and other traders’ sales from UK to Belgium.

Assuming that the difference between De Beers and non-De Beers exports did not change radically, and that from 5 October 1999 De Beers did respect its commitment not to purchase any more ?conflict diamonds?, then there is indeed room for an investigation into the ?other UK exports? of rough diamonds to Belgium. ? at least as far as Sierra-Leonean diamonds are concerned.

On 15 May, the British weekly, The Observer, reported: ?At least two UK-based companies are involved in the [illegal diamond] trade and that a number of mercenary organisations with UK links have been drawn into the shadowy world of smuggled diamonds. There are even some British mercenaries who are reported to have trained the rebels in Sierra Leone?.

In addition, UK officials are not very keen to give out information on the British diamond trade as shown during a working session organised last year by the British Foreign Office itself for a panel of experts drawn from the UN Angola Sanctions Committee, the British Treasury, Customs, Bank of England and the secret service, MI6 (the UK equivalent of the American CIA).

A source close to the panel recently told New African that when the experts asked for the UK import figures, the British officials told them that such statistics could only be found in Brussels, at the European Commission.

One of the experts described the UK answer as ?ludicrous?, for it is an open secret that the European Commission figures are a mere compilation of figures from EU member states.

This September, one of the experts told New African: ?Eventually, we got the UK figures but not from the British authorities. We found out that most UK imports transit via Switzerland where they lose their first origin.?

Interestingly enough, the traffic through Switzerland is quite sizeable: the country imports on average $2 billion of rough diamonds per annum. But Switzerland, unlike Belgium, is not the centre of the world diamond industry.

This has led to speculations, voiced mainly by the French weekly, Le Nouvel Observateur whose suspicions have been partly confirmed recently by the Swiss press and officials themselves, when they said at least part of the Swiss traffic could be linked to illicit activities such as arms trade or money laundering.

Belgian diamond dealers also doubt that the UK or Switzerland applies controls as strict as Belgium’s. At least, the Belgians circulate statistics that provide clues to the identity of the traffic coming into Belgium.

According to the Diamond High Council director general, Peter Meeus, declarations of origin are now compulsory at Belgian borders. The Council is also setting up in a number of African countries (ranging from the Central African Republic to Angola) systems of certification. It has proposed something similar for Sierra Leone.

Curiously, in its reports on the illegal trade of UNITA gems from Angola, the United Nations failed to analyse the trade flows through Switzerland, Britain, Israel, India, etc, in depth.

On 13 September, the US Congressman, Tony P. Hall, testifying before a Congressional subcommittee hearing on trade in African diamonds, made this telling observation: ?...And most diamonds are cut in India, a poor country with a long history of democracy, or Israel ? two more places we would be loath to hurt.?

Why would America (or for that matter, the international community) ?be loath to hurt? India or Israel if found to be cutting conflict diamonds?

Edwards Jay Epstein attempts an answer in his book, The Rise and Fall of Diamonds: the Shattering of a Brilliant Illusion. In a column published by the Wall Street Journal on 3 August, Epstein suggests that the entire crusade against ?conflict diamonds? is, above all, about cutting out the competition of gems ?picked out of river beds that De Beers wants eliminated? in Sierra Leone, Angola and elsewhere.

Stricter control of the trade may not fit in the strategy of the UK which, according to Epstein, ?is the diamond cartel’s best friend?.

This said, regulations are not the miracle cure to curb the traffic in conflict diamonds anyway. Because, as The Observer (London) puts it: ?Some Antwerp dealers are still prepared to buy gems from conflict zones, without identification papers.?

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