The South African Police have arrested a man who allegedly swallowed 220 polished diamonds and tried to smuggle them out of the country. The 25 year old believed to be of Lebanese origin, was caught while trying to board a plane from Johannesburg to Dubai at the O.R Tambo International Airport outside of Johannesburg.
“We nabbed him just before he went through the security checkpoint,” Paul Ramaloko, spokesman of the South Africa elite police unit The Hawks said, according to Agence France Presse
Officials said that a scan of his body revealed the diamonds he had ingested. The diamonds were estimated to be worth $2.3million. The man was given laxatives in order to flush out the diamonds from his system.
In a similar incident that occurred in March, a 27-year-old Lebanese man was similarly arrested at OR Tambo airport with $1.7 million in diamonds, SAPA reported.
Police are investigating whether the two are part of a diamond-smuggling syndicate.While South Africa was previously one of the world’s biggest producers of diamonds, many are now mined in neighbouring Zimbabwe and Botswana.
A report released on Monday by the Canadian watchdog group Partnership Africa Canada accused Zimbabwe’s government of pilfering $2 billion in diamonds from the country’s lucrative Marange fields and using the money to enrich corrupt government officials.
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