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The World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) and seven others major organisations have announced they are pulling out of the World Diamond Council’s (WDC) annual general meeting, due to take place on 28 October.
The organisations signed a joint letter to the Council announcing explaining that they did not want to attend any such meeting until the direction that WDC current leadership intends to take is “satisfactorily” explained.
The seven other signatories were the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council of India (GJEPC), the Federation of Belgian Diamond Bourses (FBDB) the Bharat Diamond Bourse (BDB), the Israel Diamond Exchange (IDE) the Israel Diamond Institute (IDI); the Dubai Diamond Exchange (DDE) and CIBJO (the World Jewellery Confederation).
The signatories expressed their disappointment at the actions the “WDC has taken during the course of the past few months and leading up to the meeting scheduled for 28 October 2014 in Antwerp, including but not limited to the biased survey conducted without consulting 98% of the industry, represented by the signatories.”
The letter emphasised that the signatories remain committed to “the spirit and the enforcement” of the Kimberley Process Scheme, a process established in 2003 to prevent conflict diamonds entering the market, and argued that their letter should not be construed as an attempt to not comply or to avoid the scheme.
The letter also said: “Whilst the mandate of our members is clear and set out herein, we will not support any entity under the parentage of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses, which has appeared to take arbitrary decisions in a lack of transparency.”
The signatories said they wished to develop and foster a “fruitful and meaningful” relationship with the WDC in the future.
