Thursday, May 12, 2016
Israel: The going gets rough for diamonds
Housing
a world where deals worth millions of dollars are sealed on the basis
of handshakes, a slip of paper and the Hebrew oath “Mazal u’Bracha”
(trust and bless), the Israeli Diamond Exchange is home to one of the
world’s largest trading floors of its kind. On any given day, according
to the diamond controller, some $10bn of the precious stones are on
site, in safes, boxes, pouches or piled on the white paper blotters of
some of its 2,500 registered “diamantaires”, the traders and cutters of
the stones.
The system, say its advocates, is built on trust. But the opaque
world of Israel’s diamond bourse in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, is under
rare public scrutiny
due to a criminal investigation into one of its own. Hanan Abramovici, a
veteran diamantaire, was arrested by Israeli police on April 20,
triggering an investigation into accusations that he defrauded fellow
traders of $65m worth of money and stones. He has not been charged
.
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