Sanctions-breaking Diamond Trade
Despite the sanctions imposed against UNITA, the organisation was able to continue financing the conflict; the UN therefore passed United Nations Security Council Resolution 1237, which gave Robert Fowler's panel of experts a mandate to investigate how the sanctions were being circumvented. According to the Fowler Report, UNITA used a number of channels to sell or barter diamonds for cash or weapons. In one of the schemes that was identified, Joe de Deker, a former stockholder in De Beers, worked with the government of Zaire to supply military equipment to UNITA from 1993 to 1997. De Deker's brother, Ronnie, was an arms dealer who allegedly travelled with him from South Africa to Angola, directing weapons originating in Eastern Europe. In return, UNITA gave Ronnie bushels of diamonds worth US$6 million. De Deker sent the diamonds to De Beer's buying office in Antwerp, Belgium. De Beers openly acknowledges spending $500 million on legal and illegal Angolan diamonds in 1992 alone. The United Nations estimates Angolans made between three and four billion dollars through the diamond trade between 1992 and 1998. The UN also estimates that out of that sum, UNITA made at least $3.72 billion, or 93% of all diamond sales, despite international sanctions.
Read more about this topic: Fowler Report
Famous quotes containing the words diamond and/or trade:
“Every time an ashtray is missing from a hotel, they don’t come looking for you. But let a diamond bracelet disappear in France and they shout John Robie, the Cat. You don’t have to spend every day of your life proving your honesty, but I do.”
—John Michael Hayes (b.1919)
“I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each of these works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)