A second auction of the country's controversial diamonds is set to be held in secret, after the Mines Ministry announced it would not make the details of the sale public.
The auction is expected to be soon, amid reports that the international monitor in charge of certifying the diamonds for sale is expected in Zimbabwe this week. Abbey Chikane, the monitor appointed by the international trade watchdog the Kimberley Process (KP), is reportedly set to arrive in the country on Thursday to approve a second auction.
Officials in the Mines Ministry have refused to confirm when Chikane is arriving, saying future diamond sales would be private. The Ministry says this is for security reasons, arguing that diamond buyers would prefer to bid on the stones without media attention.
The first auction was held last month, not long after the KP and the Mines Ministry reached an agreement that paved for the way for the resumption of exports under monitoring conditions. Sales had been banned last year over human rights abuses at the Chiadzwa diamond fields, which still remain controlled by the military. The agreement reached with the KP allows the Mines Ministry to sell a stockpile of diamonds mined at Chiadzwa over the past year.
KP monitor Chikane last month certified a portion of that stockpile as 'conflict free', allowing their legal sale. An estimated US$72 million was generated from the sale, and it's understood the government claimed US$30 million of the profits as the 50% shareholder in the firms mining in Chiadzwa.
The sale went ahead despite the diamonds being at the centre of a legal battle over the Chiadzwa site's ownership. The legal title holders, UK based African Consolidated Resources (ACR), warned that the diamonds were essentially stolen, after the company was forced off the claim at gunpoint in 2006. ACR warned that the sale was in contempt of a Supreme Court ruling, which ordered the firms mining at Chiadzwa to cease all operations until the ownership fight was settled.
The Supreme Court ruling came a few months after the High Court ruled that ACR was the legal title holder, validating the company's rights to mine at Chiadzwa.
But this week the High Court made a shock u-turn in revoking that earlier ruling. Critics have said this was at the behest of the government to 'clear the air' over the contested diamonds, in preparation for the second auction.
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WHY are the sales to be PRIVATE?
With all the questions regarding Zimbabwe's diamonds, shouldn't the auction be public and transparent?
Where is the money going? Who is selling the diamonds? Are the proceeds going to the nation of Zimbabwe or "private" investors?
ANY diamonds sold by Zimbabwe need to be transparent to show they are not "blood-diamonds" who only enrich ZANU-Poof while Zimbabwe continues to suffer.
A "private" sale does nothing to assuage the idea that the diamonds of Zimbabwe are being diverted and sold to the benefit of ZANu-Poof.......
Transparency of diamond sales MUST be a condition of Zimbabwe's government! Who is "selling" these diamonds, where did they come from, and do they benefit the people of Zimbabwe and NOT politically connected cronies of Bloodstained Bob.........
If the money actually goes to the government or the people of Zimbabwe,, then fine, sell them, and invest in the infrastructure and people of Zimbabwe, if the money goes to individuals.........
So again, why does the sale need to be "private"?........... what is there to hide?
I tell you these people are having a heyday and life is too good. No one in Zimbabwe questions and so they get away with more ill-gotten riches. It will never be known what this sale of diamonds was worth but the only tell-tale will be the increase in the many chins that will grow and the many abdomens that will hang bellow the knees and the smelliest of farts due drinking all those beers and feasting on all those meats. That's how these thieves are living - on the hog. Bloody thieving pigs.