The website of the Russian Finance Ministry has exposed the national diamond statistics – the mining of diamonds, their import and export. Specialists are certain that the information will produce an international sensation in the economic world. As it turns out, Russia becomes the world's largest diamond country, leaving the traditional leader, Botswana, behind.

Russia has to declassify the diamond statistics to be able to chair the Kimberley Process. The process was named so in honor of the town in the South African Republic, where the first conference on “rebellion” or “bloody” diamonds took place. On 1 January 2003 about 50 countries, including Russia, agreed to carry out the global control over the diamond sales.

Russia has exposed its diamond statistics for the first time. These data have always been marked as secret since the time, when diamonds deposits were discovered in the USSR in the middle of the 1950s. The Russian parliament decided to expose the information a bit more than a year ago; the deputies had to amend the law “About the State Secret” too.

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