Zimbabwe police "snatch consignment of diamonds from central bank"

By Jan Raath Feb 6, 2010, 18:24 GMT

Harare- A 29-kilogram consignment of diamonds from Zimbabwe's controversial Chiadzwa diamond field has disappeared after being removed on Thursday night by police from the central bank, in violation of orders by the country's supreme court, lawyers said at the weekend.

The incident is the latest turn in the long-running legal dispute between British-registered mining company African Consolidated Resources and the country's mines minister, Obert Mpofu, over the ownership of Chiadzwa claims in eastern Zimbabwe.

ACR was forced off its property at gunpoint by police in 2006, but in September last year a high court judge ruled that its ejection was illegal and that it was the rightful owner.

The government has appealed. Geologists say Chiadzwa is the world's biggest diamond discovery in a century and could yield more than a billion US dollars annually to the country struggling to emerge from economic collapse.

The missing rough diamonds held in three strong boxes were part of a much larger collection of diamonds that were mined by ACR before they were evicted, and afterwards by the bankrupt state-owned Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) until late last year.

Chief justice Godfrey Chidyausiku a fortnight ago ordered that they be deposited in the central bank for safekeeping until the case was finalised.

'We don't know where they (the diamonds) are,' said ACR's lawyer, Jonathan Samkange. On Thursday, officials from the government, ACR and the central bank were recording the details of the diamonds to be moved to the bank when Minister Mpofu walked in with his lawyer, said an official who was present but asked not to be named.

'He produced this letter from the registrar of the supreme court in which she said that the chief justice had suspended the September ruling, and that we couldn't move the diamonds,' the witness said.

'But the deputy sheriff (of Harare, responsible for carrying out the chief justice's order) stood his ground and Mpofu stormed out.'

The three strongboxes were carried in a heavy security vehicle under escort of senior police to the central bank and were being registered shortly before being placed in the bank vaults.

'Then the senior policeman started getting phone calls,' the witness said. 'Then he said, There have been new developments. The letter is genuine. I am taking the diamonds'.' Despite the protests of the officials, police removed the boxes.

'The police robbed the central bank,' ACR lawyer Samkange accused.

He said the letter from supreme court registrar Nomonde Mazabane was 'illegal' because court officials cannot give rulings on behalf of judges. It would also mean that Chidyausiku was reversing his earlier order, 'and that's impossible.'

'An order by the supreme court is final and cannot be appealed.'

Mpofu is coming under increasing pressue over his allegedly illegal award in September of mining rights at Chiadzwa to a South African scrap metal trader with no previous experience in diamond mining, local registered as Mbada and working in partnership with the ZMDC.

A parliamentary inquiry heard this week from senior state mining officials that they had no idea of what Mbada did with its diamonds.

Last month Mbada tried to hold an auction of 300,000 carats of diamonds in Zimbabwe, allegedly without notifying any authorities or its partner.

Zimbabwe is under close scrutiny by the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, the UN-founded international body set up to combat the spread of 'blood diamonds' that fuel wars in Africa.

Chiadzwa was overrun by illegal diggers shortly after it was seized by the government, but late in 2008 the army carried out a brutal operation to drive them away.

New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch, in a report on the operation last year, accused the army of killing and injuring dozens of diggers in the operation - an allegation the government denied.