We Must Act Against Diamond Industry Fraudsters Now

(gemkonnect.com) - The diamond industry has of late been wracked by a string of bankruptcies all over the world — India, Antwerp, Hong Kong, Dubai and Bangkok, just to name the main centres. The industry is braced for more to come and what is really worrying is that those who will be impacted most are not those going bankrupt, but those whom they owe money when they go belly-up. The monies owed in diamond bankruptcies sometimes run into hundreds of millions of dollars. A terrible sign of the times is that a bankruptcy with tens of millions owed is now considered “routine”. A business going bankrupt is, by itself, not something that should worry us. Business involves taking risks and sometimes a person makes a miscalculation that is so big, the business cannot recover from it. Bankruptcies are part of life in any business segment. The vast majority of the diamond bankruptcies of late, however, have NOT been a result of business miscalculations, market downturns, or bad timing. They have all been planned, well-orchestrated moves to intentionally defraud other diamond industry stakeholders, particularly banks, of large sums of money. Many of these people — particularly in India — have been declared willful defaulters by the banks and the authorities. And we’re all braced for many more.