Former Mandela Fund finance director Jeremy Ractliffe testified today that Naomi Campbell knew she was gifting him with blood diamonds, contradicting Naomi's testimony at The Hauge...
Last summer Naomi Campbell was called to testify at the war crimes trial of Liberia's former President Charles Taylor [click here if you missed that].
Taylor is accused of funding his war against neighboring Sierra Leone using proceeds from diamonds mined in war zones, also known as blood diamonds.
After actress Mia Farrow testified that Naomi Campbell told her Taylor gifted her with uncut diamonds after a dinner party thrown by Nelson Mandela in 1997, Naomi was called to testify. She did so reluctantly but claimed she didn't know the identity of the men who had given her the diamonds and that she gave them to charity head Jeremy Ractliffe to benefit The Mandela Fund. Ractliffe did nothing with the stones and instead kept them in a safe for 13 years until the scandal broke last year.
Ratcliffe stepped down from his position with Mandela's charity and was charged with illegal possession of uncut diamonds.
In a statement read aloud today to a court in Alexandra, Johannesburg Ratcliffe declared,
"Naomi Campbell told us that late on the night of September 25, two people whose names she did not know came to her room and handed her three diamonds as a present from the African leader who had sat next to her at the dinner party.Jeremy Ratcliffe was found not guilty.
"She appeared to be at a loss as to what to do with them. She suggested that they could possibly be given to the fund. I told her that I did not want to involve the fund in anything that could possibly be of dubious origin, or even illegal.
"Reluctantly, I offered to keep the stones for her and to see what could be done with them. I thought there would be no harm in simply leaving them where they were (in a safe in his home) until Naomi either asked for them back, which seemed unlikely, or life presented an opportunity where I could have used them for the good of the fund."
