The R&M “Lettre”

Press Release: The U.S. chair of the Kimberley Process (KP), Gillian Milovanovic, released a vision statement  calling for participants’ cooperation on issues of reform.

Rubel & Ménasché, the well-known Paris-based diamond company, has become an important contributor to the Diamond Development Initiative International.

Diamonds are a very complex product due to their high degree of quality and price differentiation. There are thousands of shape, size, color, clarity and cut combinations traded in markets with restricted price and availability information.

Press Release: Diamond dealers and retailers now have lower-cost options to confirm the nature of their diamond inventory.

Global Witness called for urgent action to prevent a businessman in China from financing Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe’s military regime.  According to the group’s report published today, ”Financing a Parallel Government?,” Global Witness revealed that Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) received financing from a Hong Kong-based businessman at the same time that the CIO is […]

A customs report has alerted the government that conflict diamonds are finding their way into India for processing, and then exported to the U.S. and European markets. More than 48,000 carats of conflict diamonds were seized in Surat and Mumbai in the past year.

Even though Zimbabwe’s cabinet agreed last week to ensure that diamond revenue is remitted to the treasury, smuggling, looting and leaks in the pipeline will remain serious problems unless urgent measures are taken to curb them. When Zimbabwe held mass diamond sales in India in November 2011, bargain hunters from as far as Israel, Lebanon and China […]

Two major trends are currently engulfing the diamond market – branding and ethical ‎consumerism. Savvy diamond firms across the pipeline would do well to enmesh the ‎two. Ultimately, a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, which ‎defines its ethical practice, should enhance and not diminish its brand.

Press Release: The Diamond Development Initiative (DDI) has released the draft standards for its Development Diamonds ethical certification project. The goal of the project is to help ensure that the more than 1.5 million artisanal and small-scale diamond miners become part of broader efforts to promote responsible business practices. 
 
The Development Diamond Standards (DDS) project […]

The Kimberley Process intercessional meeting in Washington D.C. concluded today with chairwoman Gillian Milovanovic, representing the U.S., commending all parties involved for working towards the November plenary meeting. “I can say that it was a very positive meting where a lot of work was accomplished,” she said, adding “the intercessional, as you know, is not a […]

The following is the full transcript of the speech delivered by Eli Izhakoff, President of the World Diamond Council, to the Intercessional Meeting of the Kimberley Process, which opened in Washington, D.C., this morning.

If it looks like a diamond and shines like a diamond, it must be a diamond. That is, at ‎least, from a consumer point of view. The respective discussions this past week ‎regarding undisclosed synthetic stones filtering the market and attempts at the World ‎Diamond Council (WDC) meeting to widen the definition of conflict diamonds […]