How Gujarat is helping terrorist funding through Diamond Trading
Despite strict vigilance and regulations, money laundering seems to move about with rampant velocity. From funding war atrocities to aiding terrorist organisations, illegal movement of money and assets have larger repercussions, ultimately threatening human rights across the globe. Take the case of blood diamonds for example. The hardest substance on Earth, diamond is a symbol of affluence, love and above all, beauty. How if you found out that diamond mining involves butchering like thousands of labours and businessmen? Would you buy a jewellery knowing well that the diamond embedded in it is mined out of coercion and killings if required?
In 2008, most of the valuable diamond fields in Zimbabwe was seized by the military, thereby controlling both the business and lives of people who used to work there. Regardless of the fact that diamond mines there have now been privatised, plenty of evidence reveal the intents of Robert Mugabe who controls the syndicate. Stealing diamond revenues, transporting them to various organisations, official or otherwise, Mugabe has used diamond merchandise to fund his brutal regime.
Not long back, International Diamond certification scheme, the Kimberly process had banned the sale and import of Zimbabwean diamonds. But since the lifting of this ban in 2011, Zimbabwe is free to export diamonds anywhere across the globe.
Also, note that while US authorities have put Zimbabwe’s state mining company and private companies (involved in diamond mining) in its sanction list. So for US nationals, it is a criminal offense to import diamonds mined in Zimbabwe, with severe consequences of financial penalties and maybe imprisonment.
Well, that solves the problem. Nobody buys Zimbabwean diamonds, and so no more human rights violation there. Right? Sadly not. Now that Mugabe can’t export diamonds directly, it nowhere means he can’t transport the diamonds to a third place, like say Surat, India and then sell it to the US. Once the Zimbabwean diamonds reach Surat, Gujarat, they are mixed with other diamonds until they lose their identity. Once that is done, it is very easy to export the same diamonds to the international market, be it UK or US. So the idea is: Mugabe sells his diamonds to the US en route India.
As a matter of fact, more than 90% of such rough diamonds are sent to Surat where they cut and polish the stones. The process yields a new look to this precious gem, thereby rendering a sparkling appearance. And the process is so sophisticated that even experts find it difficult to distinguish the Zimbabwean diamonds from the rest ones.
With more than 500,000 city workers dwelling in the diamond trade, Surat has become the world’s biggest diamond cutting and polishing center. Thanks to the regulation-free environment, Surat is going places because the labor is cheap and that their craft renders the diamonds a very high value in the markets. Of course, the money is then sent back to Zimbabwean diamond mafias who, just like Surat diamond merchants, don’t care about the abuses they do in the process: child labor, tuberculosis and other respiratory illnesses that befall on workers.
Taking advantage of India’s loose atmosphere, where paperwork is a joke and government officials don’t interfere (for obvious reasons), diamond smuggling is doing great in the State of Gujarat that served as the development model in Modi’s 2014 election campaign. The campaigns during the state elections for Gujarat never even mention this appalling criminal activity in their manifestos, and we wondered where the ISIS and other terrorist organisations get their funds from.
