Diamond dealers from Surat are routinely flying to Sierra Leone, buying uncertified rough diamonds from artisanal mines and smuggling them home, according to an investigation by The Blunt Times.
Many of the stones are reportedly stolen by workers and sold for dollars at “throwaway” prices.
One diamond dealer, who said he was a frequent visitor, told the Surat-based news website: “We have a network of artisanal workers in Sierra Leone from whom we purchase diamonds.
“They (artisanal workers) steal the diamonds from mines and they have to sell it within a day or two. Since we pay them in dollars, it is a quite a big deal for the poor workers.”
Another dealer told how he hired a team of four or five security guards on his diamond-buying trips.
None of the diamonds has a Kimberley Process (KP) certificate.
According to the latest figures from KP’s Certification Scheme, Sierra Leone exported 641,469 carats in 2020, with a value of $119m.
De Beers’ Lightbox lab-grown diamond brand is trialing sales of engagement rings, marking a major shift for the company, which previously insisted synthetic stones were not a product for important milestones.
The retailer is publicizing lab-grown diamond engagement rings on its home page, promising a “stress-free and risk-free” shopping experience. “Our cutting-edge technology ensures each of our lab-grown diamonds are quality guaranteed,” the site reads, with the marketing line: “Because great chemistry deserves great chemistry.”
A link takes viewers to a page listing 16 items featuring regular Lightbox lab-grown diamonds, or stones from the brand’s Finest line, which have higher color and clarity. The standard collection usually sells for $800 per carat plus the cost of the setting, while Finest retails at $1,500 per carat. The selection includes white, pink and blue stones, with prices ranging from $500 for a three-stone ring to $5,000 for 2 carats.
Lightbox was unavailable for comment on Sunday, but told Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) and JCK it was running “a small in-market test of consumer preferences in the lab-grown diamond engagement ring segment.”
When De Beers launched Lightbox in 2018, Bruce Cleaver, the miner’s CEO at the time, presented lab-grown as a product that “may not be forever, but is perfect for right now,” claimed there was “no real emotional value in lab-grown diamonds, because they’re not unique,” and said the stones did not warrant grading. It later debuted the Finest line, introduced stones larger than 1 carat, and started declaring the cut quality, color and clarity of its stones.
Mountain Province Diamonds reports positive drilling results at several targets at the Gahcho Kué diamond mine 300 km east-northeast of Yellowknife, N.W.T. It has intersected 40 metres of kimberlite near the Tuzo resource and multiple intersections – as long as 287 metres of kimberlite – at the Hearne Deep and Hearne Northwest Extension targets.
The Gahcho Kué mine is a joint venture of Mountain Province (49%) and the operator De Beers Canada (51%).
The longest intersection, 287 metres, was drilled at the Hearne Northwest Extension. This target was identified late in 2021 when a 25-metre kimberlite exposure was discovered during routine mining operations in the Hearne pit. Drilling in 2022 pointed toward the presence of a significant, previously unknown kimberlite could exist. During the 2023 drill program, 10 of the 11 holes collared within and outside the Hearne pit intersected kimberlite.
“Combined with our earlier results, we now have 21 drillholes that define the extension below the final pit and to the northwest. We are actively engaged with our operating partner De Beers to look at ways to recover this deeper kimberlite by underground mining,” said Mountain Province president and CEO Mark Wall.
Following the success at the Hearne Northwest Extension, Mountain Province said drilling moved to the Tuzo kimberlite in the hope of finding a similar extension. A new kimberlite about 40 metres northeast of the modeled Tuzo resource was drilled. The intersection returned 40 metres of kimberlite.
India-based Ethereal Green Diamond has created and sold the largest polished lab-grown diamond in history, according to the International Gemological Institute (IGI), which graded it.
Named Shiphra, the emerald-cut, 50.25-carat, type IIa stone has G color, VS2 clarity, and an “excellent” score for cut, polish and symmetry, IGI said Thursday. It measures 22.95 x 18.45 x 11.57 millimeters. It’s the world’s first polished lab-grown diamond above 50 carats, IGI claimed.
Ethereal grew the 150-carat rough using the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method over a period of eight months. It cut the stone in Surat, India, and will display the polished at its JCK Las Vegas booth. Swiss brand Shiphra Jewelry has bought it and lent its name to the piece.
“This gemstone is a paradigm-shifting breakthrough, surpassing 50 carats while exemplifying preeminent standards of sophistication and quality,” said Tehmasp Printer, president and managing director of IGI India.
The record comes shortly after IGI graded its largest lab-grown diamond to date: A 35-carat CVD stone that Maitri Lab Grown Diamonds produced. Last month, the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) said it had examined a 34.59-carat diamond that Ethereal synthesized using the same method.
The just completed Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels sale in New York is the first auction to sell two items for more than $30 million.
The first is the “Estrela de Fura,” a 55.22-carat Mozambique ruby that sold for $34.8 million ($630,288 per carat), establishing a world record price for a ruby and any colored gemstone sold at auction. It is also the largest ruby to be sold at auction. Its pre-auction estimate was more than $30 million.
The finished ruby was cut and polished from a 101-carat rough discovered by Fura Gems, a colored gemstone mining and marketing company based in Dubai. It was unearthed at its ruby mine in Montepeuz, Mozambique, in July 2022. The company named the rough gem, Estrela de Fura (Star of Fura in Portuguese). Even in its rough, untouched state, the ruby “was considered by experts as an exceptional treasure of nature for its fluorescence, outstanding clarity and vivid red hue, known as ‘pigeon’s blood’ — a color traditionally associated only with Burmese rubies,” Sotheby’s said in a previous statement.
It’s rare for a mining company to cut and polish the gem and then sell it at auction. The usual route of recently found colored gems is to sell it to a company as a rough where they would cut and polish the gem, then it would sell it privately or at auction. However, Dev Shetty, founder and CEO of Fura Gems, chose to not only go on the auction route on his own, but to embark on a worldwide tour of the rare gem, promoting not only this stone, but rubies from Mozambique as equal to rubies from Burma, which has historically been considered the main source of the most sought-after rubies.
Quig Bruning, head of Sotheby’s Jewelry America, previously said the Estrela de Fura may signal a change of this perception.
“It is undoubtedly positioned to become the standard bearer for African rubies – and gemstones in general, bringing global awareness to their ability to be on par with, and even outshine, those from Burma,” Bruning said in a statement.
Anglo American plc announces the value of rough diamond sales (Global Sightholder Sales and Auctions) for De Beers’ fourth sales cycle of 2023, amounting to US$480 million.
The provisional rough diamond sales figure quoted for Cycle 4 represents the expected sales value for the period 1 and 16 May and remains subject to adjustment based on final completed sales.
Al Cook, CEO of De Beers, said:
“Sales of our rough diamonds in the fourth sales cycle of the year saw a small decrease from the previous cycle as the industry has entered what is traditionally a seasonally quieter period. Rough diamond demand was also influenced by ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty and a slower pace of recovery in consumer demand from China than was widely anticipated.”
A 4.83 carat fancy vivid blue diamond ring sold for $8.8m at Christie’s Hong Kong as the Magnificent Jewels sale brought in a total of almost $60m.
The brilliant cut IF Type IIb gem (pictured) was surrounded by fancy-cut diamonds, in a gold setting. It sold between the low and high estimates of $7m to $10.2m.
The blue diamond led the sale, followed by two items which both sold for above their high estimates.
An octagonal step-cut 21.38 carat sapphire in a platinum ring set with tapered baguette cut diamonds sold for $4.5m (high estimate $2.3m).
And an 8.92 carats fancy vivid yellow orange pear modified brilliant cut diamond, in a platinum and gold ring, with pear brilliant-cut diamonds of 1.12 and 1.11 carat, sold for $4m (high estimate $3.8m).
Sir Gabriel “Gabi” Tolkowsky, one of the world’s most revered diamond cutters, has died at 84, friends and family wrote on social media on Monday.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1939, Tolkowsky was from a family steeped in the diamond industry. He learned the trade from father, Jean, who had a diamond-polishing factory in Israel — an education that would set him up for a career manufacturing some of the world’s most famous diamonds.
“Every day after work, [my father] would come home from his workshop with people from all over the world who had come to learn about diamond polishing and sit in the one big living-cum-bedroom-cum-dining room we had,” Tolkowsky said in a 2008 interview with Singapore’s The Straits Times.
Jean Tolkowsky and his cousin had moved from Antwerp to Palestine — now Israel — in 1932, Gabriel Tolkowsky told Martin Rapaport in 2000. Jean became the first person to install a polishing operation in the country.
“To polish diamonds, he had to use a bicycle to turn the polishing wheel, because there was no electricity,” he said. “Many of the first diamond people in Israel were my father’s pupils. I learned my trade from him, and I am proud to have had such a rare opportunity.”
From 1975 until 1995, Gabriel Tolkowsky worked for De Beers’ now-defunct manufacturing unit, Diatrada. He was famous for cutting the 273.85-carat Centenary Diamond, which De Beers unveiled in 1991 to mark 100 years since the company was founded.
For months, he “just studied it,” Tolkowsky said in the 2000 interview. “I looked at it during the day; I looked at it at night. I looked at it during the day, and at night it looked at me! I couldn’t sleep, because I was looking for answers.”
After De Beers announced he would polish the stone, he and his wife had to hide from news reporters and ended up staying in an unlisted room in the basement of a remote hotel in Cape Town, according to The Straits Times. He subsequently spent three years cutting the diamond in a high-security underground facility. The polished piece later went on display at the Tower of London. He also cut the 545.67-carat Golden Jubilee Diamond for De Beers.
The Centenary Diamond. (De Beers) “He always believed that diamonds are not a commodity but rather a unique way of expressing emotions,” said Marc-André Zucker, a board member at Antwerp’s rough-diamond bourse, the Antwerpsche Diamantkring. “His enthusiasm was endless — he was truly ‘romancing’ diamonds.”
Part of a well-known diamond family, he was the great-nephew of Marcel Tolkowsky, the inventor of the ideal-cut round brilliant diamond.
In 2002, he received a Knighthood Chevalier de L’ Ordre du Roi Leopold II from the Belgian government for his contribution to the diamond industry.
He was a “pioneer and a master craftsman who understood the wonder of diamonds like few other people,” said a spokesperson for De Beers. “Gabi combined artistry, expertise and passion to create some of the most beautiful and famous polished diamonds in history. He will be greatly missed, and all our thoughts are with the Tolkowsky family.”
Botswana will not back down on demands for a bigger share of rough diamonds from its joint venture with De Beers, President Mokgweetsi Masisi said on Thursday, upping the stakes as talks for a new sales deal appear to be stalling.
Botswana and De Beers mine the precious stones through their equally owned, 54-year-old mining venture, Debswana Diamond Co. The current diamond sales deal, in place since 2011, has been extended three times since 2020 but is set to expire next month.
De Beers, a unit of Anglo American Plc, gets 75% of Debswana’s production, which was 24 million carats in 2022. The balance is sold to state-owned Okavango Diamond Company, a vehicle established in 2011 as Botswana began moves to independently sell some gems outside of the De Beers system.
Masisi, who has been Botswana’s president since 2018 and will seek re-election in next year’s elections, now wants Botswana to sell more of its diamonds outside the De Beers channel.
“Our agreement with De Beers is very restrictive to us. We signed it at a time when we didn’t know much, but now our eyes are open,” Masisi said at a community meeting in Mmadinare, 400 kilometres (248.55 miles) north-east of the capital, Gaborone.
Masisi hinted at a possible stalemate and litigation over the sales agreement.
“Even if we lose the litigation, our diamonds will remain ours and we will never give in. If I am going to lose votes because of this issue, then so be it,” said Masisi, speaking in Setswana.
Masisi has previously threatened to walk away from the talks if Botswana does not get a bigger share of Debswana’s output for marketing outside the De Beers system. The government has not publicly stated what share it seeks, but it is believed to be as high as 50%, double the current allocation.
De Beers was not immediately available to comment.
The diamond giant says Botswana receives more than 80% of returns from Debswana, after taxes and royalties are factored in. De Beers has previously expressed confidence that its five-decade partnership with Botswana will continue, on terms “that make economic and strategic sense for both parties.”
G7 countries are imposing fresh sanctions against Russia to try to further hinder its war effort in Ukraine. “If the sanctions continue, then there will be a lot of uncertainty in the employment of one million workers,” said Vipul Shah, chairman of Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC).
