African Consolidated Resources which was declared the legal owner of the Marange diamonds before the decision was rescinded by the same judge a year later said it was still holding back on its legal case hoping that something beneficial might materialise.
This was said by the company chairman Roy Tucker last week when he released the preliminary results for the year ended March.
“I cannot complete this report without a mention of the Marange diamonds issue,” he said. “The now famous Marange diamond area which only exists on account of ACR’s original discovery- has continued to attract press and broadcast publicity. It has clearly become a major world producer of gem diamonds.”
Though ACR claims to have discovered diamonds in Marange in 2006, they were in fact discovered by De Beers at least four years earlier but the company decided to keep mum about it though it is reported to have been shipping off the diamonds to South African under the pretext that it was sampling.
ACR was, however, the first company to publicly declare the discovery, and has been accused of causing the diamond rush that ensued.
The company was stopped from mining the diamonds after being accused of illegally acquiring the mining claims. It won the case in the High Court in 2009 before Justice Charles Hungwe but Hungwe reversed his decision a year later.
The claims have since been allocated to other mining companies the major ones being Mbada, Marange Resources and Anjin. Anjin now claims to be the largest producer of diamonds in the world.
“We continue to hold back on our legal case, and I continue discussions at different levels with a view to obtaining a win-win resolution of outstanding issues with government,” Tucker said.
“I continue to believe that a resolution will be beneficial for Zimbabwe’s status as an investment destination, beneficial for Zimbabwe’s fiscus, and therefore beneficial for the people of Zimbabwe. It would of course also be beneficial to ACR.”
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