{{At least $2 billion worth of diamonds have been stolen from Zimbabwe’s eastern diamond fields.}}<\/p>\n
The stolen diamonds are said to have benefited members of the inner circle in President Robert Mugabe’s regime.<\/p>\n
This was revealed by an organization leading the campaign against conflict diamonds.<\/p>\n
The report was released Monday to coincide with the Zimbabwe government’s conference on the diamond trade.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe’s Marange fields have seen “the biggest plunder of diamonds since Cecil Rhodes,” the colonial magnate who exploited South Africa’s Kimberley diamonds a century ago, charged Partnership Africa Canada, a member of the Kimberley Process, the world regulatory body on the diamond trade.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe’s eastern Marange field \u2014 one of the world’s biggest diamond deposits \u2014 has been mined since 2006 and its vast earnings could have turned around Zimbabwe’s economy, battered by years of meltdown and political turmoil, the group said. <\/p>\n
But funds from the diamond sales have not showed up in the state treasury. Instead there is evidence that millions have gone to Mugabe’s cronies.<\/p>\n
Most of the diamond revenue is lost through a lack of transparency in accounting for how many diamonds are mined, how much is earned from their sales, the underpricing of gems on world markets, smuggling and a “high level of collusion” by government officials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{At least $2 billion worth of diamonds have been stolen from Zimbabwe’s eastern diamond fields.}} The stolen diamonds are said to have benefited members of the inner circle in President Robert Mugabe’s regime. This was revealed by an organization leading the campaign against conflict diamonds. The report was released Monday to coincide with the Zimbabwe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-4075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4075"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=4075"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=4075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}