Liberia

After the First Liberian Civil war ,started by Charles Taylor, he was elected president in 1997. Soon it was discovered that many diamonds smuggled from Sierra Leone into Liberia and that Taylor used diamonds to finance his own conflicts and to help finance RUF movements in Sierra Leone.
In a 2 year period over 2 billion dollars were exported from Liberia to Antwerp, but Liberia has generally no diamond mines. An expert quotes “ [Liberia] could not produce 10 million a year much less 2 billion…”
Diamonds from Liberia would arrive in Antwerp with fraudulent papers from fake companies. The diamonds would be marked by what country they last went through, many went through Switzerland so the diamonds would be marked Swiss. But Switzerland has no diamonds. Nobody would bat an eye and investigate including the diamond industry empire De Beers even though it was blatantly obvious the diamonds were from conflict zones.
At his trial in 2007 Taylor pleaded not guilty to crimes against humanity. Because this is still an on-going matter it’s hard to gain information.


On a side note: Yes, this is the same Charles Taylor accused of cannibilism.