Blood diamonds could be worth £950 million

The value of diamonds looted by Sierra Leone’s rebels and allegedly traded for weapons with Charles Taylor, the West African warlord, could have been as high as £950 million.

Instead of helping Sierra Leone, the world’s poorest country, the diamonds were siphoned off to arm and supply the rebels that left 120,000 people dead and millions homeless.

The popular Hollywood film, Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, dramatised the role of the gemstone in Sierra Leone’s civil war, which took place between 1996 and 2002.

Blood or conflict diamonds are the name for gems mined illegally, and often using forced labour, in African warzones.

The diamonds are then used to fund warlords or insurgents trying to take over a country. The trade in conflict diamonds has been blamed for fuelling conflicts in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire and the Congo.

Following the Sierra Leone war, the UN set up the Kimberley Process to regulate the trade in uncut or rough diamonds.

The Antwerp Diamond Exchange has estimated that blood diamonds from across Africa accounted for 15 per cent of market trade in 1990s. Today illegal diamonds are thought to be under one per cent of trade.

The “dirty pebbles” that Naomi Campbell has admitted to being given would be difficult to value, explained David Law, a Knightsbridge jewellery designer and expert in gems.

“It would be very difficult to put a value on them, even if you had them, because you don’t know the value until one is polished and you can see the quality of the diamond,” he said. “Rough diamonds, rocks, are a risk.”

Mr Law explained that after the UN rules it would be “very unusual and difficult” for an individual, even a supermodel, to sell uncut diamonds.

“You wouldn’t see rocks on the open market. It is too closed off,” he said.

Miss Campbell’s diamonds gift, value unknown, have apparently disappeared in South Africa after she gave them to a children’s charity organiser, a country where uncertified uncut stones have long been illegal.

They will never be seen on the open or legal market, according to London diamond traders.

Source: The Telegraph