1940-1945: diamantmijnen in COD beveiligd door De Beers

As all mines in South Africa were closed, the OSS reckoned that there was only one place on earth from which the Germans could get industrial diamonds in sufficient quantity to maintain their .military-industrial complex: the Belgian Congo. The Belgian Congo was, however, administered by the Belgian government in exile, which was in London and completely under British control. The mines themselves were supervised, and policed, by the De Beers syndicate. In fact, when the justice Department began to move against De Beers, the War Department objected on the grounds that it might undercut the security system that De Beers had developed in the Belgian Congo. In an exchange of secret correspondence between the War and Justice Departments (which was declassified under my Freedom of Information request), it was argued by an official responsible for maintaining the diamond blockade that "almost the entire [diamond] production of Africa is policed through the operation of elaborate controls extending through every mining area of the continent." Further, De Beers, which administered this program, sent "this controlled production ... in a closely guarded stream to London."



http://edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/chap9.htm