Royal gift or ‘stolen’ gem? Calls for UK to return 500 carat Great Star of Africa diamond mine (Image: Pixabay / Alain Pouget)
The UK government was supposed to pay more than £2 billion for the return of a huge diamond from the Kimberley Process free-for-all in what the Kimberley Process has called “the largest diamond recovery” in history. But the £2 billion was for the ‘stolen’ mineral.
The diamond, which is known as the Great Star of Africa, was claimed by the world’s governments, but no country has yet confirmed it. For the past two months, an international tribunal at the Hague has heard claims that the stone should be returned to the people of Gabon.
But on Friday, that tribunal found that the mineral that the UK government had bought was not a diamond. It is in fact a rare mineral called corundum.
The stone had been taken from the government’s own back yard by the Kimberley Process and passed between governments, the tribunal found. “The diamond could not have been the stone it purports to be because it does not exist as a stone in this way,” said judges in the case, headed by American David Laing.
The government bought the stone from the British diamond company De Beers. It believed the stone was a “highly valued high-quality diamond” worth more than $20 million. It believed there was nothing to stop De Beers selling the stone to the government of Gabon.
The ruling by the European Union’s highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), has found that “de Beers misled the government of the United Kingdom on the value of the stone”.
De Beers had argued that the stone was a diamond, but not one of the four that were declared by the Kimberley Process, which the world’s governments agreed on in 2001.
The UK government’s attempts to protect the stone “constitute a fraud on the United Kingdom” and the government is liable to refund around £1.6 billion to the diamond-loving Queen.
The government’s attempts to protect the stone are “a fraud on the United Kingdom” and it is liable to refund around £1.6 billion to the diamond-loving Queen
