The Russian government has accused Western nations of trying to undermine the Kimberley Process (KP). Group of Seven (G7) countries and the European Union have attempted to politicize the global diamond watchdog and introduce their own “biased” parallel regulatory program, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev wrote Sunday in an open letter to the KP chairman.
The claims come ahead of next week’s KP plenary meeting in Zimbabwe and reflect controversy over the attempts by the G7 — which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US and the EU — to impose a bloc-wide ban on Russian diamonds.
“Westerners have already made a fundamental decision for themselves they are not satisfied with the current transparent format of the Kimberley Process,” said Moiseev in the five-page letter. “In this regard, they seek either to distort the foundations of its work in favor of their geopolitical interests, or to destabilize and eventually destroy the KP in order to replace it with their own control mechanism.”