es and then exported to places like Belgium for circulation into the world market. Antwerp, Belgium is the worlds epicenter for diamond exchange. More than half of the worlds rough diamonds come through Antwerp, where all diamond trading is overseen by the Hoge Raad voor Diamant, or the High Diamond Council. This groups main goal is to maintain Antwerps credibility as the world center for diamond trade. The HRD attempts to control diamond smuggling by recording the origins of the diamonds they obtain. There is a slight problem with this though. The HRD records the origin of a diamond as the country from which the diamond was last exported. Therefore diamonds produced in Sierra Leone, say, may be officially imported and registered as originating in Liberia, Guinea, Israel or the UK, depending on their journey from one trading center to another. (PACNET) This does not really help to stop the illegal smuggling of diamonds out of Sierra Leone. Although DeBeers claims that none of its diamonds have origins from Sierra Leone, there is no truly accurate way to tell.An African nation that will be further looked into later in this report is Liberia. This country is though to be the worlds center for illegally smuggled diamonds. Diamonds produced in countries such as Sierra Leone, where there are diamond embargos, can be smuggled into Liberia and distributed into the world market under the false assumption that Liberia is their country of origin. There are many disturbing statistics that point to the truth of this matter. While the Government of Sierra Leone recorded exports of only 8,500 carats in 1998, the HRD records imports of 770,000 carats. Annual Liberian diamond mining capacity is between 100,000 and 150,000 carats, but the HRD records Liberian imports into Belgium of over 31 million carats between 1994 and 1998 - an average of over six million carats a year. (PACNET) It doesnt make much sense that the actual amount of ...
