De Beers Rigs Botswana Sales Contract Negotiations

Gaborone: The De Beers Group has scored a major coup against Diamond Trading Company Botswana (DTCB), rigging the odds against Botswana as the country prepares to re-negotiate the Diamond Sales Agreement which lapses in 2020 and reversing achievements of the De Beers relocation from London to Gaborone.

‘Sunday Standard’ reports that against all advice from his technical team, the Managing Director of DTCB, Tabake Kobedi has taken sides with De Beers to relocate the Information Technology Systems of DTCB from Gaborone to Johannesburg.

Professionals at DTCB have railed at what they perceive as continued “capture” of DTCB by De Beers.

“This capture of DTCB leadership by De Beers brings to question DTCB independence regarding the valuing of diamonds,” Botswana based professionals at DTCB state in a confidential report.

Other than usurping the power and influence of Botswana based professionals in determining the price of diamonds sales, the new development effectively reverses by many years, the achievements that Botswana had slowly and painstakingly achieved to take ultimate control of the country’s diamond operations from the mine to the market.

It is feared that the De Beers apparent fancy footwork which has caused a major rift between management and professionals at DTCB will undermine benefits of the much vaunted relocations of DTC operations from London to Botswana.

Lengthy missives exchanged between De Beers engineers and their Botswana counterparts at DTCB which have been made available to the Sunday Standard provide a peep show into the heated debate in which De Beers argues that Botswana was not the appropriate host for DTCB’s sophisticated IT systems while the counter-arguments however is that the Botswana system is about to undergo a massively expensive upgrading.

•