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finally lodged in the gravel of a riverbed or the soft red Lunda Sul soil to wait
the day when lucky diggers prized them out and brought them for sale. I pocked
up a half dozen and rubbed them with my thumb. They had a smooth, soapy tex-
ture.
A question formed as I fingered the rough diamonds. Even in their present
state they were valuable enough to incite avarice and bloodshed. Transformed
from tough to gem, they would come to symbolize romance, more than any
other substance on Earth, capture imagination and ignite passion? Beyond de
Beers, the South African colossus that dominated the business, stretches an in-
tricate and close-knit world-wide diamonds network that operates in some re-
spects on a vast industrial scale and in others like a medieval guild.
Diamonds may be a girl’s best friends, but part of the enticement can be
explained by simple arithmetic. The 120 million carats of rough diamonds ex-
tracted from the Earth every year weigh a total of just 24 tons, a single truck-
load, but those 24 tons are sold by the producers for about seven billion dollars.
Since they cost less than two billion dollars to extract, the profits are already
immense. By the time the diamonds reach the customers waiting at the far end
of the pipeline, the truckload, set in jewelry, is worth over 50 billion dollars.
Critics insist that the high price of diamonds is purely artificial, not sub-
ject to economic constraints of supply and demand but entirely dependent on the
machinations of De Beers – a cartel, as it is often called, not least by the antitrust
division of the United States Department of Justice. ( De Beers was indicted in a
1994 price-fixing case, and its executives do not set foot on U.S. soil for fear of
subpoena.)
Under the guiding hand of the Oppenheimer family, De Beers has indeed
striven with ruthless efficiency to control supplies and thereby manipulate
prices. By tradition De Beers’s 125 carefully screened customers assemble ten
times a year in London, Lucerne, and Johannesburg to attend “sights”, where
they buy rough stones. “Sightholders”, as customers are called, are presented
with an allotment of stones in a plastic zip bag inside a yellow plastic briefcase;
they must buy the entire offering at the price named by De Beers. Take it or
leave it – negotiations over stones or diamonds that weigh more than 10.8 carats.
“Diamonds are not really a commodity like gold or silver”, a leading New
York dealer explained to me one day. “You won’t buy a stone from a jeweler
and then sell it back to him for the same price – he is not going to give up his
profit. But they are definitely the easiest way to move value around. “They are a
form of currency,” remarked Mark van Bockstael of the Diamond High Council
in Antwerp. “They back international loans, pay debts, pay bribes, buy arms. In
many cases they are better than money.” Monrovia, capital of Liberia, for exam-
ple, is known as a mecca for money launderers seeking to turn questionable cash
assets into diamonds that can then be easily moved and sold elsewhere. There
have been unconfirmed reports that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization, al
Qaeda, made use of this operation.
30
finally lodged in the gravel of a riverbed or the soft red Lunda Sul soil to wait
the day when lucky diggers prized them out and brought them for sale. I pocked
up a half dozen and rubbed them with my thumb. They had a smooth, soapy tex-
ture.
A question formed as I fingered the rough diamonds. Even in their present
state they were valuable enough to incite avarice and bloodshed. Transformed
from tough to gem, they would come to symbolize romance, more than any
other substance on Earth, capture imagination and ignite passion? Beyond de
Beers, the South African colossus that dominated the business, stretches an in-
tricate and close-knit world-wide diamonds network that operates in some re-
spects on a vast industrial scale and in others like a medieval guild.
Diamonds may be a girl’s best friends, but part of the enticement can be
explained by simple arithmetic. The 120 million carats of rough diamonds ex-
tracted from the Earth every year weigh a total of just 24 tons, a single truck-
load, but those 24 tons are sold by the producers for about seven billion dollars.
Since they cost less than two billion dollars to extract, the profits are already
immense. By the time the diamonds reach the customers waiting at the far end
of the pipeline, the truckload, set in jewelry, is worth over 50 billion dollars.
Critics insist that the high price of diamonds is purely artificial, not sub-
ject to economic constraints of supply and demand but entirely dependent on the
machinations of De Beers – a cartel, as it is often called, not least by the antitrust
division of the United States Department of Justice. ( De Beers was indicted in a
1994 price-fixing case, and its executives do not set foot on U.S. soil for fear of
subpoena.)
Under the guiding hand of the Oppenheimer family, De Beers has indeed
striven with ruthless efficiency to control supplies and thereby manipulate
prices. By tradition De Beers’s 125 carefully screened customers assemble ten
times a year in London, Lucerne, and Johannesburg to attend “sights”, where
they buy rough stones. “Sightholders”, as customers are called, are presented
with an allotment of stones in a plastic zip bag inside a yellow plastic briefcase;
they must buy the entire offering at the price named by De Beers. Take it or
leave it – negotiations over stones or diamonds that weigh more than 10.8 carats.
“Diamonds are not really a commodity like gold or silver”, a leading New
York dealer explained to me one day. “You won’t buy a stone from a jeweler
and then sell it back to him for the same price – he is not going to give up his
profit. But they are definitely the easiest way to move value around. “They are a
form of currency,” remarked Mark van Bockstael of the Diamond High Council
in Antwerp. “They back international loans, pay debts, pay bribes, buy arms. In
many cases they are better than money.” Monrovia, capital of Liberia, for exam-
ple, is known as a mecca for money launderers seeking to turn questionable cash
assets into diamonds that can then be easily moved and sold elsewhere. There
have been unconfirmed reports that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization, al
Qaeda, made use of this operation.
30
