After more than a month of speculation, the "world's largest diamond", said to be twice the size of the famous Cullinan, was yesterday denounced as a "piece of plastic" by the man at the centre of the drama over its discovery.Accusing former associates of a scam, a British property developer, Brett Jolly - who thought he was going to be fabulously rich as a result of the find - said he was going to lodge a complaint with the police. He claimed he was the victim of a fraud aimed at persuading him to buy the land in South Africa's North West province on which the so-called diamond was found.
Offering a fuller account of the saga, he said that he had not actually seen the contentious stone until Thursday.
"They showed me a lump of plastic," Mr Jolly said. "It was clearly, clearly a lump of plastic. There was no way in the world it was a diamond."
He said the miners then produced a diamond tester. He said they had seemingly fixed it beforehand to give a positive reading, but forgot to take the cap off while they did the test, making nonsense of the claim that the instrument showed it was a genuine diamond. "The cap was still on the bloody thing," Mr Jolly said.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Tags: Diamond | Plastic | Fake
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