"Ex-aide to Mandela quits over diamonds" by New York Times | August 20, 2010
PARIS — A tangled saga involving supermodel Naomi Campbell, Nelson Mandela, and former Liberian dictator Charles G. Taylor claimed a victim yesterday when a trustee of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund resigned over his decision to remain silent about a mysterious pouch of uncut diamonds Campbell handed to him 13 years ago.
In a statement, the fund said the trustee, Jeremy Ractliffe, regretted his decision and apologized for “possible reputational risk’’ as a result of his actions.
Earlier this month, Campbell testified as a prosecution witness at Taylor’s trial that she received a pouch of “dirty-looking stones’’ from two unidentified men after a dinner hosted by Mandela and attended by Taylor, among others. Within hours, she said, she handed a pouch containing diamonds on to Ractliffe.
Related: Charles Taylor's Material Girl
Taylor rejected accusations that he traded weapons for so-called conflict diamonds to sustain the bloodletting that claimed some 200,000 lives in neighboring Sierra Leone.
But, in a statement on the day Campbell testified, Ractliffe said he did not declare the stones to the fund or to South African authorities at the time because he did not wish to jeopardize the reputations of the fund, Mandela, or Campbell. He kept them for 13 years, then handed them to the police in South Africa.--more--"
