Another book going on to my Must Read list.
On June 8, 2001, De Beers officially disappeared from the radar. All publicly owned shares of the company and its subsidiaries were purchased by a consortium of buyers collectively called DB Investments. The buyers were the Oppenheimer family, which has controlled the company since the 1920s; Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, De Beers’s sister corporation that focuses on gold exploration; and Debswana, the diamond exploration company owned jointly by De Beers and the government of Botswana.
The absorption of the company from the South African and London stock exchanges into private hands means that De Beers no longer has to make detailed public financial reports to securities organizations or shareholders. According to the script drafted by Cecil Rhodes more than 100 years ago, De Beers is officially accountable to no one
Stones stolen from Sierra Leone at the tip of a machete and the barrel of an AK-47 could literally be anywhere, from safehouses in Monrovia to safe deposit boxes in Belgium to the display cases of jewelry stores in the neighborhood mall. Until international export controls such as those suggested by the Clean Diamond Act and the Kimberley Process are implemented and enforced to screen legitimate diamonds from those tainted by warfare and brutality-and until peace comes and takes hold in impoverished, desperate countries where diamonds are found there will be no way to tell whether or not a cherished diamond ring was once washed in the blood of innocent Africans.
If nothing else, the story of Sierra Leone’s diamond war has proven unequivocally that the world ignores Africa and her problems at its peril. Just like global commerce and the widening reach of terrorism, events far from home often have very tangible impacts. Sierra Leone has shown the world that there is no longer any such thing as an “isolated, regional conflict.”
Perhaps there never was.”
