African Consolidated Resources (ACR) CEO Andrew Cranswick has denied state media reports that the High Court has approved the sale of diamonds at the centre of an ownership dispute between his company and the government.
On Tuesday the state owned Herald claimed the High Court had sanctioned the sale of 129 thousand carats of diamonds mined from the Marange diamonds fields where abuses from the army are rife. ACR was kicked off the fields at gunpoint from their claim in 2006 by the army.
On Wednesday Cranswick told Newsreel, there has been no green light given to the sale of the diamonds. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court ruled in February that the diamonds should be lodged with the Reserve Bank pending the outcome of the Ministers appeal to the Supreme Court. He said they had made an urgent application to the High Court to stop the sale of the diamonds and the court had simply ruled on the urgency of the matter and not the main arguments of the case itself.
ACR had argued any sale of the diamonds would make them suffer prejudice which would be irreversible but, as Cranswick says, the judge decided compensation could be sought in cash if the sale went ahead. He has effectively instructed us to do a normal application. Cranswick insists the judgment by the Supreme Court that the diamonds should be kept at the Reserve bank still stands, and the High Court cannot overturn that.
Only last year the international diamond trade regulator the Kimberly Process blocked the sale of the gems citing evidence of the countrys failure to comply with strict human rights standards. An investigator from the group visited the country and concluded that KP standards were not being met. Their assessment was that while Zimbabwes procedures looked good on paper they were not being implemented. The country was then given up to June of this year to remedy the abuses.
Mines Minister Obert Mpofu is accused of corruptly awarding the mining rights for the Marange fields and has vowed to defy the Kimberly Process if necessary. He has stated,, We are going to benefit from our diamonds whether with the KP or not. He claimed the West was manipulating the process to block the country from selling the diamonds and these people have clearly taken their sanctions agenda to another level. Mpofu also barred a parliamentary team from undertaking a fact finding mission in the area.
The Minister has made no secret of his contempt for the owners of the diamond claim, ACR and its CEO Cranswick. Speaking briefly to reporters in March this year after his appearance before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy, Mpofu blamed Cranswick for the failure to sell the diamonds. That man will never mine here as long as I am minister, he vowed. Mpofu has now threatened a police investigation of ACR alleging the company bought diamonds on the black market.
Cranswick meanwhile, told us the charges from Mpofu were nothing new and he had made them in the past in a detailed letter to the Attorney General. He said even the courts had exonerated his company as they could not be accused of buying back their own diamonds from the black market. The legal battle between ACR and the government resulted in two government firms who were mining on the fields being ordered to stop their operations by the Supreme Court in February. This came about after ACR approached the court to re-assert its mining rights. The court rulings are still being defied as the mining firms continue to mine on the claim.
Post published in: News