A huge so-called \u201cpeace diamond\u201d sold by the government of Sierra Leone to discourage crime-tainted \u201cblood diamonds\u201d fetched $6.5 million on Monday.<\/p>\n
The 709-carat stone, which was unearthed in March, is the largest discovered in Sierra Leone in almost a half-century and is between the 10th and 15th largest ever found worldwide, experts say.<\/p>\n
Found by a company led by evangelical Pastor Momoh, the diamond was given to the government in the hopes it would handle the sale in a way that leaves more profits and development potential in Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n
British jewelers Laurence Graff purchased the stone, according to Martin Rapaport, whose group hosted the auction. The government was expecting about $7 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps we\u2019re dealing with the price of transparency,\u201d Rapaport said.<\/p>\n
Illegal mining and sales of so-called blood diamonds have been a major source of strife in many African countries including Sierra Leone. That was the goal of the auction approach of President Ernest Bai Koroma.<\/p>\n
Expectations at home were high, yet the price may have seemed a disappointment.<\/p>\n
Gibril Sesay, a market seller, said he wanted the government to provide \u201cwater, electricity and good roads for the people\u201d with the proceeds of the gem following the sale.<\/p>\n
But Beatrice Cole, a civil servant, told AFP \u201cthe money paid for the diamond was far below what we expected\u201d after watching the auction live on TV in Freetown.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A huge so-called \u201cpeace diamond\u201d sold by the government of Sierra Leone to discourage crime-tainted \u201cblood diamonds\u201d fetched $6.5 million on Monday. The 709-carat stone, which was unearthed in March, is the largest discovered in Sierra Leone in almost a half-century and is between the 10th and 15th largest ever found worldwide, experts say. Found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":380553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-showbiz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=380552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/380553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=380552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=380552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=380552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}