The company worked with the Belgian Federation of Diamond Bourses (BFDB), the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) Research Centre and the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) to alert the trade about the issue. “Additionally, IGI decided to share detailed scientific information with other gemological laboratories around the world, as we now suspect that the volumes of colorless synthetic diamonds being released on the global markets have increased noticeably, and may perhaps already be prevalent throughout the diamond centers,” IGI stated.
IGI issued a trade alert to other laboratories regarding its findings. IGI found that all these sets of goods were CVD synthetic diamonds and likely came from the same source. Īround the same time, a smaller parcel of 10 stones was submitted to IGI’s Mumbai lab by two separate parties. Lorié said that the polished dealer and his supplier both claimed to be under the impression that the goods were natural diamonds. “This means that there could be a large amount of undisclosed synthetic diamonds on the market.”Īn unnamed polished dealer, who had bought the synthetic stones on the open market -at natural diamond prices- submitted the goods to IGI for certification about two weeks ago after he was unable to sell them as a parcel on the dealer market. “A diamond dealer cannot tell the difference between natural and CVD synthetic diamonds and it requires sophisticated machinery at the labs to make the necessary findings,” Lorié said.
#IGI DIAMONDS FULL#
Roland Lorié, the co-chief executive officer (CEO) of IGI, told Rapaport News that the company received an initial batch of 145 stones at its Antwerp lab and that following tests proving the stones to be CVD synthetics, the full parcel of more than 600 stones were presented to the lab. Several hundred man-made diamonds were sent to the International Gemological Institute (IGI) in Antwerp and Mumbai to be certified as natural diamonds, raising concerns that a large volume of these undisclosed CVD synthetic stones may have entered the market already. “At IGI, we have seen a huge increase in double-verification demand, which means before going for a major purchase, consumers like to receive confirmation that the stone matches the original report,” Van Es noted. IGI has noted a rise in consumers sending diamonds to a second lab for checking, which can help avoid getting duped by fraudsters. The stone was also inscribed with a fake GIA laser number corresponding to the certificate. It came with a certificate from the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) for a natural, D-flawless diamond, but had in fact been cut with “meticulous precision” to match the data on that report, IGI noted.
#IGI DIAMONDS VERIFICATION#
“This is the largest lab-grown diamond ever certified by a leading gemological laboratory where the sole purpose was to pass off a lab-grown stone as natural,” Bob Van Es, IGI managing director for Thailand and Hong Kong, said Wednesday.Ī client submitted the round brilliant-cut loose stone to IGI’s Thailand lab for verification purposes.
RAPAPORT. The International Gemological Institute (IGI) has discovered a 6.18-carat synthetic diamond that fraudsters had misrepresented as natural by falsely pairing it with a mined-diamond grading report.
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