Israeli Diamond Dealers Sue GIA And Rappaport For $180 Million

(jewishbusinessnews.com) - Lawsuit of $180 million has been submitted earlier this month by Israeli diamond dealers, the Yelazarov family, against the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) and Rappaport. The suit was submitted to the Supreme Court of New York by the law firms of Miller- Leiby from New York and Adv. Amir Altshuler from Israel. Yelazarov family of diamantiers claim that in May 2015 the GIA and Rappaport published a report that hundreds of diamonds, attributed to the family’s companies, were suspected as having been temporarily treated in a special way which supposedly raised their color grade at the stage of lab examination and then “disappeared” after a short period of time. In such a manner the affected diamonds allegedly received gradings that did not reflect. Legal counsel for the family, Amir Altshuler, said, “The lawsuit pertains to the GIA monopoly which controls the worldwide diamond grading market; there may be fundamental injustices in a number of areas, including the possibility of fraud or abuse of monopolistic power.”