Global diamond hub Belgium is prepared to extend sanctions on Russian diamonds, as Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told jewellery industry in New York on Tuesday evening that these ‘war symbols’ should be banned from the G7 market from January 2024.
The ban on Russian diamonds was first announced on 15 September as a Belgian official told journalists it would be put in place from next January, Reuters reported.
“The G7 wants to reduce Russian diamond revenues. As a leading diamond trading hub, Belgium is responsible for contributing to its success. Tonight, I met with industry leaders to discuss how to seize this opportunity and raise the transparency standards for the entire industry,” De Croo wrote on X on Wednesday.
“Russian diamonds have come to symbolise war and human rights violations,” the PM added.
Speaking to a panel of jewellery industry actors who gathered at the residence of the Belgian Consul General in New York Tuesday evening, De Croo said Russian diamonds should be banned from the market, asking actors to “go the last mile” to ensure the success of Belgium’s ban proposal.
No sanctions have so far been imposed on Russian diamonds, though sales revenues for the gem currently help the Kremlin finance its war of aggression against Ukraine.
With Belgium harbouring the world’s centre for the trade in rough and polished diamonds in Antwerp, it has been reluctant to impose such a ban until now.
$220 million worth of diamonds are traded in Antwerp daily, amounting to approximately $47 billion annually, and the city controls 86% of the world’s trade in rough diamonds and 50% of the trade in polished diamonds.
And while Belgium’s imports of Russian diamonds have fallen sharply since the beginning of the war in February 2022, they have not entirely stopped.
A key concern voiced by industry actors, notably in Belgium, has been that a ban could be rendered inefficient if there is a rerouting of Russian imports towards other countries, like India.
Belgium also wants an efficient mechanism that would allow for the tracing of every diamond and thus prevent Russian ones from still finding their way onto the markets of the G7 countries (the US, Canada, Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Japan and the EU) despite the ban. This mechanism is now nearly operational, the Belgian official told the press last Friday.
“Making the system fully transparent requires a great amount of work that we must do together. Let’s take this final step to implement the system as of 1 January 2024,” De Croo told industry actors this Tuesday.
The new traceability system can be compared to SWIFT, the international banking system, also based in Belgium, said Lianne Keme, the founder of Everledger, a company specialising in the transparency of supply systems develops technology used to trace items such as luxury goods and sensitive minerals, Belga reported.
It would involve a three-layer control mechanism, including the Kimberley Process – an international certification system established in 2003 to reduce the flow of “blood diamonds” onto the global market – and using blockchain technology, the Belgian press agency reported.
“Russia is the biggest supplier globally. With this system, we are cutting them out, leaving them in an inferior market with lower prices. We are slashing the financial flows from this sector,” the Belgian official added, Reuters reported.
(Anne-Sophie Gayet | Euractiv.com)
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