GIANT GEM : Claims of huge diamond find met with skepticism by industry insiders

A diamond supposedly twice as big as the Cullinan diamond has allegedly been found in the North West province, but the validity of the claims were questioned by industry pundits on Tuesday.

“If it is a real diamond it’s an amazing freak…but it all sounds very strange,” James Allan, a former top-rated diamond analyst, now at corporate finance firm Allan Hochreiter, commented.

He suggested, after looking at a photograph of the 'diamond', that it was more likely that it was a fluorite crystal.

Nonetheless, Mining Weekly Online sent the picture to a leading gemologist, who asked not to be named, who described the image as "very interesting".

“This could very well be a diamond,” he said over the telephone. "It does seem to have octahedral characteristics," although he drew attention to the fact that the picture, taken with a cell phone, lacked clarity.

'7 000 CARATS SITTING IN A VAULT'

Spokesperson for the company claiming to have found it, which was part of the property development firm Two Point Five group, Brett Jolly said in a telephone interview that "as far as I understand, a 7 000 ct light green stone is sitting in a bank vault in Johannesburg

Jolly told Mining Weekly Online later in an exclusive interview in Sandton that the stone weighed a whopping 1,6 kg.

He said that the company, whose name and shareholders' identity he declined to divulge, would prioritise security, legislative clarity and certification of the stone in the coming days.

However, he added that the company which discovered the stone was in posession of mineral rights for the property on which it had been discovered.

He admitted that he personally owned property interests in the area, and therefore stood to benefit from rising property prices, but said that he had undertaken not to sell any propertyuntil the verification process had been completed.

The company was seeking legal counsel from its own attorneys and also planned to consult an international specialist on the issue.

The finders had 48 hours in which to register the find with the Department of Minerals and Energy, and 40 days to register it with the international industry body.

Asked about the sceptism with which the claims had been met, Jolly conceded that this was a logical response.

"Of course the Department of Minerals and Energy would think it unlikely...in fact it is bloody unlikely," he said.

However, asked of the likelihood of such a large stone being found in the North West province, the gemologist said that this was “quite possible”.

“There’s a lot of similar ones, although not in size, being found in Zimbabwe; it’s the typical light green colour,” the gemologist said.

Jolly said that the person who had actually discovered the stone had 25 years of experience in diamond-mining.

"If he says its a diamond, I promise you it is," he maintained.

EVERYONE'S A SCEPTIC about Biggest Diamond

However, also commenting on the picture, another industry personality said that the "apparent perfection of the sides of the glass is unbelievable".

"There is no way that the glass block in the photo is a diamond that has been produced from either an alluvial or kimberlite orebody," he said in an email to Mining Weekly Online.

The world's biggest diamond miner, De Beers, was a little more circumspect.

"If one believes one has a stone which may be of value, one simply takes such a stone to a recognised gem lab to establish whether one has a stone or a diamond, the certainty level of such a lab is absolute," world number-one diamond producer De Beers spokesperson Tom Tweedy said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

The world's largest diamond to date, the Cullinan, which was presented to the Queen of England, weighed in at some 3 106 ct, and was discovered at the Cullinan mine, which diamond giant De Beers is in the process of selling, more than a century ago.