US reaffirms diamond sanctions on Valentine’s Day

{mosads}U.S. sanctions in place since 2008 prohibit transactions with the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation and the companies in which it owns a 50 percent or greater interest. The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has also identified Marange Resources and Mbada Diamonds as blocked property in December 2011 because the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation has a 50 percent or more ownership share in each of those companies.

The United States began applying targeted sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2003 after President Robert Mugabe’s government began seizing white-owned farms. Mugabe and his government have long said the sanctions hurt individual Zimbabweans, a charge the United States denies.