Ottawa — An international diamond "policing" scheme has stricken the Republic of Congo from its list of countries certified as following global trading rules, and accused the nation of exporting illegal gems.
The Kimberley Process fights to keep "conflict diamonds" -- used to finance armed rebellion -- off the world market by pushing for a transparent production and export system.
The removal of the central African nation from the list of countries dealing in "clean" diamonds effectively drives the Congo from the legitimate international diamond trade.
A team of experts, headed by former South African Kimberley Process chief Abbey Chicane and including experts from Canada, Israel, the World Diamond Council and the Ottawa-based NGO Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), toured Congo in June to test its claim that its gems totalling five million-carats in annual diamond exports were mined in the country or imported from legitimate producers.
In the 1990s, sales of illegally mined diamonds funded insurgencies and civil wars that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, and the Republic of Congo's neighbour, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Paramilitary groups seized diamond fields, enslaved workers, and sold the gems on the open market or through third parties until 48 countries, representing 98 percent of the world's diamond production, signed a treaty in Ottawa in 2002 requiring the documentation of diamonds sold on the legitimate market.
PAC Programme Officer Dorothée Gizenga Ngolo was part of the team that examined the Congo's diamond trade during a five-day trip to the nation in early June. Her group is a coalition of Canadian and African NGOs that work together on issues of human rights, human security and sustainable development.
She said the investigators saw no evidence of diamond production, and that all of the stones exported by Congo lacked documentation needed to prove they were not "blood" or "conflict diamonds."
Liberia has also been suspended by the Kimberley Process because it will not allow monitoring of its diamond trade. The country has been a major outlet for conflict diamonds mined in Sierra Leone, which claims it has stamped out the conflict diamond trade, but some western intelligence agencies believe 40 percent of its production is still smuggled out of the country.
Sierra Leone government officials said last week they have diamond production under control, with more of it being done under Kimberley Process standards because of a reduction in export tariffs from 15 percent to three percent and because of better monitoring of diamond fields by government agents.
But critics of the monitoring system told IPS the government monitors are under-paid and poorly trained.
Congo's figures on diamond production were ludicrous, Ngolo said.
"Congo's annual report to the Kimberley Process said it produced five million carats inside the country and had no imports at all. While Congo has the geology for diamonds, we didn't see any sign that they are being produced there," she added in an interview.
The Congo government has an agreement with an Israeli firm to open mines in the country, but work on the project has not yet begun, Ngolo added.
Kimberley Process authorities were alerted by NGOs and officials of the government of the war-ravaged DRC that Congo was allowing undocumented diamonds from the DRC, the Central African Republic, Gabon and Cameroon into the country.
The diamonds were sold at cut-rate prices in Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates, rather than in the more heavily policed markets of Antwerp, Belgium and Tel Aviv, Israel, they added.
The Kimberley Process is mandated by the United Nations to certify the legitimacy of gems sold on world markets, based on a 2002 treaty signed in Ottawa.
The process certifies about 98 percent of the world's diamond trade.
The suspension of Congo was "necessary to safeguard the credibility and integrity" of international efforts to block black-market conflict diamonds from the 60-billion-dollar annual diamond business, Tim Martin, chairman of the Kimberley Process, said in a press release Friday.
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"The findings of the review mission are clear: the Republic of Congo cannot account for the origin of large quantities of rough diamonds that it is officially exporting," he added.
Republic officials denounced the suspension, calling it "arbitrary." Mining ministry spokesperson Louis-Marie Djama issued a statement accusing the DRC of engineering the ban.
Ngolo said the action effectively makes it impossible for Congolese exporters to sell their stones for anywhere near market price. That, she says, should prevent Congo from being used as a laundering centre for conflict diamonds.
"Countries like Lebanon, which was recently dropped from the Kimberley Process, won't want Congo's diamonds because they have a hard enough time selling their own. Eventually, countries like Lebanon and Congo, and those that produce blood diamonds, will not be able to profitably sell diamonds and the trade will stop," she added.
