China-Zimbabwe joint venture refutes diamond smuggling reports

Anjin investments, a China-Zimbabwe joint venture, on Tuesday refuted local media reports that it had smuggled 3.7 million carats of diamonds worth 200 million U.S. dollars from Zimbabwe to China.

"The figures are factually inaccurate," Anjin board member Munyaradzi Machacha told a press conference in Harare.

Machacha said the company exported 3.37 million carats worth 112 million dollars, but the process was in strict accordance with Zimbabwean laws.

The export permits were duly signed by the government ministry in charge of the procedures, he added. "It was an ordinary export that met all requirements, including the remittances to government of all taxes and fees from the sale proceeds."

Anjin is one of the seven companies that were forced by government recently to stop operations in Zimbabwe's diamond rich Chiadzwa region after refusing to be consolidated into one company in which the state holds 50 percent shares.

Diamonds have become a key sector to Zimbabwe's economic development since the discovery of rich diamond reserves at Chiadzwa in 2006. But output began to drop about three years ago over diminishing alluvial reserves and depressed global prices, prompting the government to force consolidation to increase transparency and accountability of the diamond sector. Enditem