Angola and Sierra Leone Blood Diamonds

Cecil John Rhodes founded De Beers, a diamond mining and trading corporation back in 1888. It is the world's largest diamond cartel and receives all credit for making the engagement ring "an inseparable part of courtship and married life" (Jay Epstein, p.121). De Beer has shown immense success at controlling the price of diamonds. It achieved this goal by limiting the worldwide supply. It has a strong monopoly in the diamond business and is thus what one may call "the mafia" of the diamond world. It was till the 1980s that De Beers was involved directly in Sierra Leone. De Beers had some concession in offshore diamond mining and it enjoyed an office in Freetown. After that time it was known that De Beers has maintained an indirect relationship rather than a direct one. It then started to purchase offices in other lower diamond...
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