Diamond News Archives

(IDEX Online) - Diamond factories in Surat, India, will remain closed until 14 July at the earliest as the city battles a COVID-19 outbreak centered on its main cutting and polishing zone.

There have been 850 confirmed cases of coronavirus among diamond workers and merchants, mostly in the Katargam area.

It means world's key diamond manufacturing hub is at a complete standstill.

The Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) has ordered all the city's 4,500 diamond factories to close until 14 July.  It says diamond markets can re-open on 10 July.

The city saw a slow return to work, to around 40 per cent capacity after lockdown restrictions were eased on 25 May but there have been widespread breaches of social distancing rules, and one manager was arrested for allegedly operating a factory during lockdown.

The SMC originally ordered a lockdown from 1 to 7 July, but has since extended it in view of the high number of coronavirus cases and ongoing breaches of lockdown rules.

Its commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani said: "After July 14, the SMC will review the situation in the diamond industry on the standard operating procedure guidelines and take further action," according to a Times of India report....

The White House wants Congress to pass another stimulus package by the first week in August, before lawmakers head home for their annual summer recess, and to keep the cost at $1 trillion or less, according to Vice President Mike Pence’s top aide.

Most everyone you know is a member of a cult. It’s not their fault, and they didn’t consciously seek it out, but your friends and family and almost everyone you know and even come in contact with belong to a system that has brainwashed them.This cult is robbing them. And it’s doing so clandestinely, without their knowledge or approval. It’s so sly that they don’t even know it’s happening.In fact, the leaders behind this cult have convinced them that this system is normal. They accept it, since that’s the way things are done and the way everyone else does it.

(IDEX Online ) - A Chinese jewelry firm based in Wuhan stands accused of securing loans with eighty-three tons of fake gold.

Kingold Jewelry is a Nasdaq-listed company based in the city which reported the world's first cases of coronavirus.

The allegation made in Caixin, a Chinese publication known for its investigative journalism, is that Kingold used copper-alloy bars with a gold leaf coating as collateral against loans totaling $2.8bn from more than a dozen of the country's financial institutions over a five-year period.

Kingold, which brands itself as "A Company With A Golden Future", was founded in 2002 and sold jewelry worth $1.4bn in 2016, according to its website.  Its shares fell 57 per cent after publication of the Caixin cover story.

The alleged fraud was exposed in February when a bank sought to liquidate Kingold collateral to cover defaulted debts and discovered all the glitters is not gold.

Test results show the "gold" is actually a copper alloy, but Kingold's chairman Jia Zhihong is adamant the company has done nothing wrong....