N e w s

From August 1st 2002 a new diamond certification system will be launched in Russia, better suited to the market conditions If the situation at the international diamond market stabilises, these innovations would help to increase the value of Russian diamonds abroad.

The document called: "Diamonds: Technical Requirements and Classification" is already conformed to the Russian State Depositary for Precious Metals and Gemstones "GOKHRAN" and to Russia's controlling body for export of precious metals and gemstones "AlmazJewellerExport", and approved by the General Director of Russia's largest diamond cutting company "Kristall" factory.

Current classification system was often criticised for reflecting only the amount of the stone's defects, while all other aspects were purely descriptive.

Diamonds will be judged by five criteria: size (small, medium and large in carats), the shape of cut, clarity, colour and the quality of cut. Anatoly Bocharov, the leading expert of the " Kristall" company, believes that the last point- is a true innovation in the Russian system of diamond classification. In the stone quality assessment the same English terms are used, such as: "excellent", "very good", "good", "medium" and "poor". While according to the previous system, the colour of diamonds were determined according to the scale from 1 to 9, but according to the new one this becomes from 1 to 15. Regarding the clarity assessment scale, this had grown from 10 to 11.