DIAMOND SMUGGLERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14465, 3 September 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

DIAMOND SMUGGLERS.

WOMEN CONCEAL STONES WORTII £100,000 IN THEIR DRESSES. The Berlin papers announce that the Colonial Office and the South-west African Diamond Regie have received information that £100,000 worth of diamonds have been smuggled in one haul out of the colony, involving the loss of £35,000 to the Colonial Treasury. A detective employed in the affair has ascertained, say the journals, that the owners of the diamonds entrusted them to certain women who travelled from Luderitz Bay to Capetown with the diamonds hidden in their clothes. The women were arrested in Capetown, but the diamonds were no longer in their possession. It is believed that they were shipped on board a German liner bound for Europe through the connivance of the steward. The liner left Capetown shortly before the arrest of the women. On its arrival in a German port the ship will be searched for the diamonds. All the diamonds exported from South-west Africa have to pay an export duty of 33£ per cent, ad valorem. The management of the Diamond Regio informed Reuters correspondent that it knew nothing of the except from newspaper reports. Inquiries were being made, but meanwhile it was disinclined to believe the story. Despite this official scepticism the Deutsche Tageszeitung maintains that it is able to confirm the accounts of smuggling, and adds that the police in Luderitzbucht, Berlin, and Hamburg are following up the case. It declares that diamond smuggling flourishes in Southwest Africa, the islands off the coast in British possession providing an easy means of getting stones beyond the reach of the German authorities.