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THE HOUSE IN CHARTERHOUSE STREET
tuaHy controls the giant Cape Coast Exploration and Con­solidated Diamond Mines of South-West Africa, perform­ing the administrative and consulting work of all these companies and establishing for them a central sorting office.
Further: It owns 100 per cent of the ordinary shares of the Diamond Corporation (which will be dealt with briefly later). Its subsidiary, the Diamond Trading Company of London, in which De Beers has 50 per cent interest at least, is the most powerfull item of diamond distribution in the world—almost the only item—is the selling agency of rough stones to all the cutters, all the dealers, all the manufacturers of the world. De Beers has the right to all diamonds in Rhodesia and priority rights over all diamonds found in the Spergepeit area of South-West African territory. It is a large Stockholder in other enterprises, such as we previously men­tioned: explosives, railroads, gold mines, and the like.
How important is that? It is this important: Of all the stones produced annually in the world, the diamond ac­counts for 95 per cent of the value. And De Beers (through its affiliates and subsidiaries) controls 95 per cent of that 95-per-cent production.
That brings up another interesting question: How much money has been paid out for diamonds and how many dia­monds have come out of the earth? Anyone who pretends to answer correctly, or even within a million points of being correct, is a fool. All we can do is to scan some statistics. It is estimated that from South Africa have come about 200,000,000 carats of diamonds since 1867; from India, about 12,000,000; from Brazil, about 15,000,000; and 15,000,000 carats from other scattered sources—in other words, an all-time high of nearly 300,000,000 carats, and that may be one million or ten million or twenty million this side of the real figure. How much were those 300,000,000
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