ANTWERP, BELGIUM (Aftenposten): something is moving in the world capital of diamonds.
Goldsmith Peter Poussenier sports a diamond ring. The diamond is about the size of a huckleberry.
– This costs NOK 106,000.
– Where does the diamond come from?
Poussenier picks up the phone and calls his diamond dealer.
– Hi, I have a customer who is wondering about the origin of a 0.91 emerald cut diamond ring.
In English, with a distinct Indian accent, the answer comes quickly:
– I do not know. But we started tracking Russian diamonds sold after February 24th.
The Belgian city of Antwerp is called the diamond capital of the world. Almost nine out of ten rough diamonds in the world come here to be cut and polished, before being set in jewelry or rings.
For a long time the industry has been associated with conflict diamonds, wars and human rights abuses. In Antwerp they cleaned up. They call themselves leaders in the fight against conflict diamonds. But now the industry has a new problem.
Should they continue to import Russian diamonds? Russian goods such as gold, caviar and vodka cannot be imported into the EU. But so far diamonds have escaped sanctions.
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