Raging diamond wars!

Renowned local entrepreneur Anthony Siwawa together with a diamond merchant, Gil Goshen, were last week quizzed by the Botswana Police over criminal accusations laid against them in a case that turned out to be a fragment of a year-long raging business dispute between two Israeli diamantaires with vast international business interests, being fought on Botswana territory.

At the core of the dispute, which resulted in De Beers suspending diamond allocations to Life Diamond Botswana (LDB), a local diamond cutting and polishing plant, last month, are two Israeli diamantaires, Erez Dalyot and Alon Arabov, who are fighting for the majority 80% ownership in LDB with the latter claiming in courts that Dalyot sold his 40% shareholding to him in a February 2013 agreement.