SYSTEMATIC DIAMOND ROBBERIES

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 11789, 13 February 1906, Page 2

SYSTEMATIC DIAMOND ROBBERIES

A few months ago Captain Jenner, chief of the detective department at Kimberley, wrote to one of his subordinates, a man named Damant, asking him to explain certain diamond transactions in which he had been involved. Damant's answer was to commit suicide. This tragic event was one of the main factors in a remarkable illicit diamond-buying trial, which has just been concluded at the criminal sessions. The amount involved was the largest on record, something like £36,000, and extraordinary interest attached to the trial owing to the high social position of the accused, one David McGill. Mr McGill, who is a well-known diamond buyer at Kimberley, was accused of purchasing diamonds from a seller who had no license to sell. The law penalises such a transaction, because, generally speaking, a person who deals in diamonds without a license must have acquired the stones in an illegitimate way, either having stolen them himself or purchased them from the actual thief. At present the De Beers Company esimate they are losing something like a quarter of a million sterling annually owing to the clever tactics of an organised gang of I.D.B's. (illicit diamond buyers); but in the McGill case the seller of the diamond was Damant, the late head clerk in the Kimberley detective department, and as the department in the course of its duties acquires considerable quantities of stones, which it subsequently disposes of, it might never have occurred to a buyer that the chief clerk was selling otherwise than in the ordinary course of departmental routine. The main question at the trial was whether McGill knew that Damant was dealing in illicit diamonds acquired for illicit purposed. It was admitted by the accused that transactions aggregating'large sums of money were omitted from the register which he had certified to be correct by signature. The jury, after a protracted hearing of the evidence, brought in a verdict of not guilty on all of the 147 different counts of the charge, and a remarkable scene occurred in Court. Sir John Buchanan, the Judge trying the case, had distinctly summed up against McGill. and expressed his surprise and dissent at the verdict in the strongest possible terms. The case has brought to light some remarkable facts in connection with the working of the 1.D.8. Act. Damant seems to have used practically the whole machinery of his secret service, not to stamp out the trade in illicit diamond buying, but to encourage it for the purpose of carrying on a private traffic on his own account. According to a statement made by Colonel Harris, a De Beers director, in the course of the trial, De Beers loses about £20,000 in stolen stones every month. This is due chiefly to the operations of a skilful gang, with cleverly laid plans, who get the diamonds out of the country by way of Rhodesia and Natal to Europe. The gang is understood to include women, who have the reputation of experts at this type of robbery. No women have been detected, so great is their skill, for many years.