World Diamond Council
International Headquarters: 52 Vanderbilt Avenue / 19th Floor / New York, NY 10017 / USA
Eli Izhakoff, Chairman / 580 Fifth Avenue / New York, NY 10036 / USA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
For more information, contact Eli Izhakoff, 212-575-8848 Matthew Runci, 646-658-0246 |
World Diamond Council
The World Diamond Council welcomes the announcement by the Chair of the
Kimberley Process that the Congo Republic (Congo-Brazzaville)
has been expelled from the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme based on the
results of a visit by its team of experts to that country last month. While it
is certainly regrettable that any country should have to be expelled, in the
Council’s view this decisive step demonstrates that the KPCS process is robust
and has teeth.
Eli Izhakoff, chairman
and CEO of the WDC said, “A credible and effective KPCS is essential to the
continued viability of the legitimate diamond trade and to the positive image
and reputation of the product. These are core elements in the foundation of
consumer confidence in diamonds as a symbol of love. The diamond industry fully
supports the Chairman’s decision.”
The World Diamond Council believes that it is absolutely
vital to the credibility the KPCS scheme that its tolerance standards be
rigorous and systematically applied. In its report, the KPCS
fact-finding mission stated that it found Congo was exporting diamonds at a
rate approximately 100 times greater than its estimated production. Moreover,
the report cited the inability of authorities to account for the massive
discrepancy between the volume of exports on the one hand and of domestic
production and imports on the other. Given the explicit evidence that large
quantities of diamonds have moved from Brazzaville with KPCS certificates into
the legitimate diamond trading stream, the conditions cited by KP Chair Tim
Martin as justification for the decision to expel this the Congo Republic from
the system are entirely justified.
###