UN team in town to explore India’s links with Africa’s `tainted diamonds’

Global Witness, a diamond industry watchdog group had earlier estimated that for the current year alone, sales of approximately $70 million worth of illegal diamonds are funding the civil war in Sierra Leone.

Panel chief M Chungong Ayafor told The Indian Express that while Customs officials here and captains of the diamond industry have said that no “conflict diamonds” were being processed or polished here, they were not sure if the tainted stones were being indirectly routed to India.

“Some 99% of Indian imports come from Belgium, London and Israel and none of these are mining or producing countries. We have debated with them the possibility of conflict diamonds being first routed to these countries and then re-routed to India.

“We have been assured by the Indian council that they will in future write the place of origin of uncut diamonds on all consignments. That is one way of minimizing the possibility of the tainted diamonds coming into Indian processing centers in places like Mumbai, Jaipur and Surat,” he pointed out.

Members of the panel say that they had come to India armed with leads about certain diamond dealers of Indian origin working in the conflict zone but were assured that no Indian importer has dealings with them.

In the first phase of their investigations, the UN panel learnt that three persons of Indian origin may be on a common network with arms agent Adnan Khasshoggi. According to information with available with them, Rakesh Saxena is presently living in Canada while Sanjivan Ruprah is also active in the diamond business in Sierra Leone and apparently shares the same office address with Khasshoggi in London.

The third name on the UN’s check-list is that of Samir Patel, a diamond dealer who has a company by the name of Jupiter Mining in Sierra Leone and also allegedly has links with Khasshoggi.

While taking the plea that they have no links with these diamond traders, officials of the Gems and Jewelry Export Promotion Council cautioned the UN panel that their current probe should not have a fallout on their business.

Latest available figures show that imports of uncut diamonds worth Rs 11,254 crore ($ 3,036 million) were done in 1998. The Council has also suggested to the UN panel that a “road map” be identified so that processing centres in India avoid the flow of diamonds from identified conflict areas.

Earlier, Kamalesh Sharma, India’s permanent representative at the UN had pointed out that should the legitimate diamond cutting business get “affected” in any way due to the probe, it would impinge on the livelihood of over one million Indians.

Harjit Sandhu, the Indian expert who is co-ordinator of the UN panel on Sierra Leone, revealed that besides officials of the Ministry of External affairs and Commerce, they held meetings with Customs officials in Mumbai and New Delhi.

“There are suspicions about an India link since it is the largest diamond processor in the world,” he explained.“Our final report will spell the suspicions out and discuss the possibility of conflict diamonds being routed to India through secondary sources.”