The ” blood diamond” market, or diamonds smuggled and trafficked for illicit products,  is estimated  to  amount  up to 4 percent of the $7 billion global diamond market, or $280 Million.

Source: Douglas Farah, Blood From Stones (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), pg. 4.

Illegal miners in Kenya are living in poverty and are selling gems on the black market in order to eat, reports the BBC.  According to the report, the miners are selling stolen gems dug up from mines to black market traders for $2.  The gems then go on to the world markets where they are sold for up to $1,000.

Source:  Kenneth Mungai, “Deadly game of Kenya’s gem trade,” BBC News, August 14, 2009.

Human Rights Watch is accusing the Zimbabwe Army of operating a diamond smuggling ring in its country.  The report states that the army is forcing laborers, including children, to mine diamonds.  Over 200 are believed to have been killed when the army took over mining operations.  The military makes up to $200 million a month from the illegal sale of diamonds.

Source:  “Zimbabwe army ‘runs diamond mine’,” BBC News, June 26, 2009.

The report by Human Rights Watch:  Diamonds in the Rough

Illegal miners of diamonds in Zimbabwe are getting involved in clashes with security forces as fewer resources in the country leads more to the trade.

From the LA Times:

Ronald seems a sober, respectable, church-on-Sunday type. Not the kind you’d find prospecting for diamonds here in Zimbabwe’s wild east, a world of swaggering foreigners, dirty money and shoot-to-kill police. Not the sort who’d utter movie-script lines like this one: “You can make $15,000 or $20,000 in 30 minutes. But you can die within seconds.”

Ronald, like the rest of Zimbabwe, has caught Africa’s nastiest ailment — diamond fever.

Sleepy towns such as Mutare have blinked awake to find their quiet streets buzzing with opportunists and black marketeers. Every day, illicit miners show up at the hospital with gaping bullet wounds and flimsy excuses for how they got them. Characters straight out of “Blood Diamond” cruise like sharks.

But the biggest sharks are nowhere to be seen: Officials of President Robert Mugabe’s regime are looting the diamonds, industry sources and members of Zimbabwe’s security services say.

Not only are they personally enriching themselves with one of the few natural resources still left in this ruined country, party fat cats may be finding life support in the diamond riches, Western diplomats and analysts fear, and gaining one more motive to cling to power.

Canada’s diamond industry is at risk of having “blood diamonds” laundered into their diamond industry by organized crime and terrorist organizations, according to the Canadian government. 

Form canada.com:

The diamond industry in Canada’s Far North is vulnerable to smugglers looking to import “blood diamonds” or launder the proceeds of organized crime syndicates and terrorist organizations, newly released federal documents say.

A boom in diamond mining during the last decade has rapidly turned Canada into the third-biggest producer in the world and created jobs in the North, especially in the Northwest Territories where the country’s biggest mines are based.

But Canadian authorities warn the fledgling industry could become a vehicle for money laundering.

“Diamonds have been, and continue to be, a main source of currency for both terrorist organizations and organized crime,” states a briefing note prepared by Citizenship and Immigration Canada in April.

“Conflict/blood diamonds are used to fund rebel operations, purchase arms, and other illicit activities (drugs). They are portable, high value and cannot be detected by any type of screening method,” continues the note, obtained by Canwest News Service under the Access to Information Act.

Blood diamonds, sometimes known as “conflict” diamonds, are typically mined in African countries wracked by civil war and used to finance rebel or government forces.

The international diamond smuggling market is valued at $280 million and ranked 39th on the Havocscope Black Market Contraband Index. 

The Governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank told a conference that 10,000 people were entering Zimbabwe each month to traffic in illegal diamonds. 

From The Herald (via AllAfrica.com):

Over 10 000 people from all over the world are visiting the eastern border town of Mutare every month for illegal activities involving diamonds, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono said Wednesday.

Gono told a conference of exporters that there were over 2 000 syndicates in the town that were smuggling diamonds out of the country

Diamond Smuggling is a $280 million market ranked 39th on the Havocscope Black Market Contraband Index. 

Source: Partnership Africa Canada, “Killing Kimberley? Conflict Diamonds and Paper Tigers”, The Diamonds and Human Security Project, Revised Edition, November 2006,pg.5,(accessed: November 13, 2006).

Source:  Tristan McConnell, “Fighting diamond smuggling in Africa,” Christian Science Monitor, July 30, 2007,(accessed: July 31, 2007).

Officials from Botswana, the world’s biggest producer of high-quality minerals, reported to participants of the Kimberley Process that 99.8 percent of the world’s diamonds are being certified as legitimate.

Source: Moabi Phia, “Watchdog urged to crack down on Cote d’Ivoire,” Mail & Guardian Online, November 6, 2006,(accessed: November 13, 2006).

Although Venezuela is estimated to produce 150,000 carets of diamonds annually, it has officially exported none since 2005.

Source: Partnership Africa Canada, “The Lost World: Diamond Mining and Smuggling in Venezuela,” November 2006, pg. 1,(accessed: October 9, 2007).