Remember Leonardo DiCaprio?
July 11, 24Remember Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond? Today conflict diamonds are (almost) a thing of the past.
The Kimberley Process (KP), established in 2003, says its 59 members (representing 85 countries) are "responsible for stemming 99.8 per cent of the global production of conflict diamonds".
Back in the 1980s blood diamonds accounted for as much as a fifth of global production.
And there were, no doubt, a number of real-life characters like the fictional Danny Archer (played by DiCaprio in the 2006 movie).
He was a gunrunner and smuggler in Sierra Leone, where rebels from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) used diamonds mined by slaves to finance an 11-year civil war in one of the world's poorest countries.
KP has successfully outlawed the vast majority of conflict diamonds in the last two decades.
So the arrest of a suspect on Spain's Costa del Sol only last week serves as a poignant reminder of how things used to be, how the industry has come, and how long it can take for justice to catch up with perpetrators.
Officers from the Policia Nacional arrested a man allegedly involved in directly financing Sierra Leone's RUF between March 1991 and January 2002 in a conflict that left 70,000 people dead and 2.6m displaced.
They say the man, named across Spanish media as Manuel Terren Parcerisas, was involved in "the smuggling of blood diamonds… obtained by paramilitary militias that enslaved civilians, who were used as labour in the mines of Sierra Leone.
"According to investigators, the detainee would have directly financed the Revolutionary Unified Front (RUF) with his activity, thus supporting its fight in the Civil War."
The suspect, a Spanish citizen, was arrested at Malaga Airport last Tuesday (2 July) after arriving on a flight from Brazil, where he has lived since 2007.
An investigation into his activities was launched in 2020 after a complaint filed by a civilian victim who worked as a slave in one of the many "informal" diamond mines in the country's Eastern Province that were controlled by child soldiers of the RUF.
The diamonds mined in Sierra Leone were "laundered" in neighboring Liberia and were mostly sold to a Belgian company, according to Policia Nacional, for distribution across Europe.
Police searched Parcerisas's summer residence - a large property in Malaga - after his arrest and are now analyzing seized documents and electronic devices.
"The man arrested designed and supervised in the 1990s the actions of a whole business network with headquarters in different places such as Liberia, and supposedly dedicated to the extraction, marketing and export of diamonds," said Policia Nacional.
"The blood diamonds obtained in Sierra Leone were laundered under this network as supposedly diamonds obtained legally in the neighbouring country, Liberia.
"According to investigators, the arrested man would have participated directly in the face-to-face purchase of these diamonds, thus coinciding with military members of the RUF who made the delivery directly to him."
Sierra Leone is ranked currently by the International Monetary Fund as the world's 12th poorest country, with a per capita GDP of just $2,189 (USA is $85,373).
Latest available diamond production figures (KP, 2020) show exports at 641,469 carats, with a value of $119m.
A judge at Spain's National Court has ordered Parcerisas's imprisonment.
Have a fabulous weekend.