15 march 2021
Yesterday The opinion that the USSR was actively involved in the smuggling of industrial diamonds after World War II is quite widespread in the literature of the subject. For example, “Industrial diamonds were spirited from Zaire and Sierra-Leone to Beirut, thence by diplomatic pouch to Moscow”
1. Or there were reports that old traders in Beirut - where many illicit dealers in Africa shipped rough diamonds to - recalled that there were often industrial diamonds in the diplomatic pouches sent to Moscow by the Soviet embassy in Beirut.
2 Such information is in almost all canonical works on the diamond market history, not to mention dozens of the op-ed pieces and journalistic articles. It should be noted that the original publications on the rough diamond smuggling by the Soviets dated back to 1951-1957, and later on, they were used by market researchers and journalists as a reference base without adding any significant details.