$2bn Zim diamonds plundered

About $2-billion in diamonds have been stolen from Zimbabwe's eastern diamond fields and have enriched President Robert Mugabe's ruling circle, international gem dealers and criminals, according to an organisation leading the campaign against conflict diamonds.

Marange fields have seen "the biggest plunder of diamonds since Cecil Rhodes ", the colonial magnate who exploited South Africa's Kimberley diamonds a century ago, charged Partnership Africa Canada, a member of the Kimberley Process, the world regulatory body on the diamond trade.

Marange field - one of the world's biggest diamond deposits - has been mined since 2006 and its vast earnings could have turned around Zimbabwe's economy, battered by years of meltdown and political turmoil, it said. But funds from the diamond sales have not shown up in the treasury. Instead, there is evidence that millions have gone to Mugabe's cronies.

The report, released yesterday to coincide with the Zimbabwe government's conference on the diamond trade in Victoria Falls, casts a shadow over the Mugabe regime's effort to win international respectability for its gem trade.

The report condemns the government's control of the Marange diamond fields which have made Zimbabwe a major player in the international diamond trade.

"Marange's potential has been overshadowed by violence, smuggling, corruption and lost opportunity," the report said.

"The scale of illegality is mind-blowing," and has spread to "compromise most of the diamond markets of the world", said the report.

Finance Minister Tendai Biti said in his 2012 budget he had been promised $600-million in diamond revenue for the national treasury to help re-finance crumbling health, education and other public services. Biti said that only a quarter of that pledge has been received.

Mines Minister Obert Mpofu, a Mugabe loyalist, insists Western economic sanctions have prevented the government from getting good prices for the diamonds on the international market.

Mpofu, the mines minister since 2009, amassed an unexplained personal fortune and is linked to a "small and tight group of political and military elites who have been in charge of Marange from the very beginning" and who are personally benefiting from the diamond sales, the report alleged.