THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1987.
Page -13
!
B
I've seen
I.D.B. at work
A MAN DIGS UP A DIAMOND-THEN THE SMUGGLING RING THAT COVERS
THE WORLD MOVES INTO ACTION...
ĮREAKING the silence of the steamy jungles of Sierra Leone is the click of picks
and shovels that sound like woodpeckera at work.
Wielding the shovels, picks, and sieves are the "front" workers of the 1.D.B. men-illlelt diamond buyers.
From the villages and a few towns of Sierra Leone, a Crown Colony half the size of England and Wales, the people hend for the jungles for diamonds and smuggling.
It is bellaved that nearly £20,000,000 worth of diamonds a year are smuggled out of the Colony.
Behind the pick-and-shovel brigade is 0 highly-organised smuggling pipeline that stretches from the jungles via adjoining Liberia fo Beirut in the Lebanon
And from shady traders in Beirut the parcels of stones, cach worth a fortune, often find their way into Rusgla.
There they do not adorn the necks of beautiful women,
There the diamonds become the cutting tools that help to make weapons of war. like the inter-continental ballistic missile, And because Russia Is deprived of access to normal diamond supplies, Illicit dia- mord digging has become major activity of the Colony.
the
of
So great has the illicit digging become that many more diamonds are smuggled out the country than the big mining out of its vast company takes concession legally.
The company
is
London-
bossed Sierra Leone Selection Trust, part of the Oppenheimer "ring" which keeps a taut grip on world diamond suppiles and Bales
An army'
CHERRA LEONE ls the one bly leek in a world-tight "ring." It is a smugglers' paradise,
Floads virtually do not exist. to the dia- Travel up-country mond areas is hazardous, with: the filmsy bridges over rushing rivers often swept away in the monsoon season which steams the country up into a Turkish bath atmosphere.
There is only a handful
by FREDERICK ELLIS
well-organised diamond-digging and snuggling.
It is a force quite incapable of controlling the ever-growing smuggling army.
The Belt diggings have brought roaring gold rush boom times to remote mining towns, Africans who desert into the jungle to set themselves up as self-employed illegal diamond for diggers quiedly earn what them are rich sums.
best diamond market
stones.
for gera
Reputable firme hale this illicit business but they have to compete with the less reputable oncs,
Prices soar
HE smuggling boom bas
distorted
the
of economy Sierra Leone, Prices of shovels, picks, and sleves have rocketed.
Yet thest receive only a Food prices have soared as the
hot money floods the country,
fraction of the real value of the stones.
The big money is made by the "middle men who get the stones out of the country, travel- ling among the illicit diggings with case-loads of notes.
Syria-Liberia
EY ure largely Syrians, who I virtually control the up- country trade of the Colony.
So highly organised the racket that light nir- craft innd
I secret jungle airstrips to ferry the stones out, malcly to the rucshackle Negro republic of Liberia.
My friend was the buyer for a famous American firm.
For the smaller fry the big bay is
beer--and beer-crozed natives are part of the ID.B. bacirwash.
But for the big operators or natives who strike it rich the popular buy 19 a big, black, ahiny, new Humber.
the
The diggers coine into the sultry slam of Freetown-the only place of any size In country with biered sultense: stuffed with notes. They buy the cars for casti.
Often the newly rich cannot even drive the cars. Even TV sets are bought-tor prestige purposes, for there is no TV in the Colony.
It is a comincn a mud hut with heating or
sight to see no lighung. drainage proudly
enormous
I sat last year sipping lager In a bar
Liberia's capital. furnished with an in Monrovia.
ond quite useless-refrigerator.
In an attempt to end the
the smuggling racket
Sierra Leone Government decided make diggings legal if the cluiras were registered.
And to sell their stones legally tu the omleto! Oppenheimer "ring."
A shadowy character joined us and in front of my eyes a parcel of stones was negotiated. Destination, New York,
For though the majority of
the of stones and their way to police to keep track of the Middle East, America is still the
MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN
ARE YOU SURE
YOU CAN DO IT, KORE? IT'S THE ONLY WAY TD STOP A POSSI→ BLE WAR!
--ITSAREK --YES--
LALUST NOW TRY / BUT THRCÁIGH TO REACH THE / A CONCEALEP. OTHER KING-7 MICROPHONE- GOODBYE,
KORR.
GOODBYE. MANDRAKE,
JOHNNY HAZARD
HE'S GOT A FRAIL IN TOW?.
10
But the scheme has falled to
work, for the literate workers
FROE KORR HAS VISITORST MANPRACE AND LOTHAR!), SURROUND THE PULÁCET HEMUST NOT ESCAPEL
still prefer
up country to go
-Sierra Leone's Government is and dig Wegally.
powerless to stop the racket and It is estimated that
more despite many arrests of illicit than o,hog out at a total diggers, the game stil goes on, population
125,000 are
A diamond expert in Free- engaged in 1.DB. activities.
Inflation has followed the town told me it would take a flood of het diamond mency regiment of soldiers to slop the making life for law-abiding liicit diggings. notives extremely difficult.
But the shadowy Syrian merchants are making fortunes. For one big stone, half the size of a matchbox, the African digger receives the local fortune of £200. That stone is worth
£40,000 in America.
As always in these gold rush activities, outbreaks of violence follow as the tides.
Shures of tho TAILPIECE:
the company owning
legal diamond concession fell 2s. 6d. the other day..
Taxation drove me
from England
from SAM WHITE, Geneva
TN one of those Swiss lakeside hotels to which a polyglot collection of aged rich retire, seemingly only for the purpose of dying as sumptuously as they have lived, I came across an old acquaintance, Professor Derek Jack-
Son
He was having tea in the The fact is that Jackson 1s o inevitable hotel palm court brilliant and delicated scientist, lounge with his funcce, who one of the great physicists of will shortly become his fourth this age, wife.
in
A
She is an Englishwoman her early forties (Jackton 51)
glows with and she beautiful complexion and a charming gaiety of manner,
Formerly Miss Consuela Eyre, she is the widow of a German, Frince Ratibor, who died years ago.
10
Like Jackson, she prefers to live out of England, and hou visited the country twice since
1938,
OUT OF FOCUS Jackson is a man whom it is terribly easy to get out of focus, Because of his great inherited wealth, because uf a certain boyish wilfulness in his manner,
because of his reputation
For Onancial reasons Jackson has just established his legal domielle In Switzerland, but in France, where he lives most of the year, he works for stretches of 10 hours a day without o French National break at the Centre of Scientific Research.
There he is engaged in pure research unburdened as be would be at a univeralty by leaching duties,
Here in Switzerland he completing a volume detailing his latest researches in spectro- scopy.
Why does not Jackson cume back and work in Britain? A man of extreme Right wing political views, he told me: “Because I would be crippled by taxation. That is the effect British taxation has drives mast men
Iko me out
of the country."
steeplechase jockey, because the exuberance he shows in relaxation, it is easy to overlook
the underestimate important thing about him,
Dr
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