Mammoth "diamond" found in SAfrica punted as "eighth wonder" (Roundup)

By Clare Byrne Aug 28, 2007, 14:16 GMT

Johannesburg - The 'eighth wonder of the world' - a leading diamond expert on Tuesday predicted a glittering future for a stone found recently at a mine in South Africa if is confirmed as the world's largest diamond.

Les Milner, a gemologist at the Jewellery Council of South Africa, described the stone, which was photographed on a table beside a mobile phone that it appeared to dwarf, as 'massive.'

'If it is a diamond it could easily be between 6,500 and 7,000 carats,' he said. The previous world-record-holder, the Cullinan Diamond, which was discovered near Pretoria in January 1905, weighed about 3,106 carats uncut.

Milner described the stone's shape as octahedral (having eight plane surfaces) and its colour as having a 'faint green tinge.'

If the green colour remained after the stone was cut and polished, it would be even more rare, he said, venturing: 'It could be the eighth wonder of the world.' If it wasn't a diamond, it could be a crystal or a fake, he said.

News of the discovery of the gem, which Dieter Hahn, treasurer- general of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses estimated as weighing between 1.2 and 1.4 kilograms, has stunned the diamond industry.

'It caught everybody in the diamond industry offside,' the founder of Diamond Cutters International, Fred Cuellar, told Britain's Guardian newspaper, predicting a flurry of 'mad bidding' among would-be buyers.

South Africa's SAfm reported that the stone was found on Monday but Cuellar said he had received the news some days back.

Little is known about the company behind the find - apparently a newcomer in an industry dominated by mining giant De Beers.

The Cape Times newspaper on Tuesday quoted an excited Brett Jolly, a shareholder in the mine, as saying that he would 'go on record and say that it's 7,000 carats.'

Jolly declined to give the name of the mine or its location for 'security' reasons but said the stone was being transported to Johannesburg for safekeeping in a bank vault.

'If one believes one has a stone which may be of value one simply takes such a stone to a recognized gem lab to establish whether one has a stone or a diamond,' De Beers spokesman Tom Tweedy told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Milner, who analyses gems on behalf of De Beers, said he had not been contacted about assessing the stone.

Asked to hazard a guess as to its value the gemologist said that if is was a diamond that would be like asking the value of the Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo da Vinci.

'What matters now is how wide, how clear and how well cut it will be,' Cuellar told the Guardian, predicting the stone would rank among the biggest, if not the best-quality diamonds worldwide.

Described by his lawyer Schalk Marais as a businessman and property developer, Jolly made news in 2001 when he went to court in Cape Town to seek the liquidation of a timeshare property company Holland Moorehouse of which he was chief executive.

Jolly had 'sort of mentioned' having acquired the right to explore for diamonds in North-West province, Marais said.

North-West province borders Botswana, which has become one of Africa's richest countries on the back of its rich diamond deposits. Several small companies are involved in alluvial diamond mining in the province. Some farmers in the area around Christiana on the Vaal river told dpa they earn more from diamonds than from farming.

The Cullinan Diamond, dubbed the Great Star of Africa, was found by Premier Diamond Mining Company in January 1905 and later cut into several stones, one of which adorns King Edward's sceptre in the Tower of London.

In recent years the largest diamonds found in southern Africa have been discovered in the recently-reopened Letseng diamond mine in the Maluti mountains of Lesotho.

Given the expense of insuring such a lucrative find, Milner predicted that its owners would be anxious to sell it quickly to a polisher or a collector with the most likely destination being Antwerp or New York.