Natasha Fa­tah

Toron­to and Trinidad were bound by a strange link when He­le­na Frei­da Bod­ner was ar­rest­ed at Pear­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.Ac­cord­ing to the Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Po­lice, the 66-year-old Bod­ner was ar­rest­ed on Feb­ru­ary 3, when she ar­rived in the coun­try from T&T, car­ry­ing more than 10,000 con­cealed di­a­monds "in her body." Ten thou­sand, two hun­dred and two di­a­monds to be ex­act. And the to­tal val­ue of these di­a­monds is es­ti­mat­ed at around $400,000.

It was a news sto­ry wor­thy of an Ocean's Eleven movie plot line but ac­cord­ing to ex­perts, Ms Bod­ner's ar­rest is in­dica­tive of some­thing much more se­ri­ous, and po­ten­tial­ly much more sin­is­ter.

Trinidad is not a di­a­mond-min­ing coun­try, and so the di­a­monds must have come from an­oth­er coun­try mak­ing their way through Trinidad (and Ms Bod­ner's body) to Cana­da. It's pos­si­ble that the di­a­monds were then like­ly mov­ing on to a fourth or even fifth des­ti­na­tion. Au­thor­i­ties say the pur­chase of the di­a­monds must have been se­cured well in ad­vance, as it's un­like­ly that a smug­gler would risk mov­ing that quan­ti­ty of di­a­monds with­out a guar­an­teed pay­ment. So who was the pur­chas­er on the oth­er end of the ship­ment?

The pos­si­ble an­swers are dis­turb­ing.Cana­da is a key play­er in the di­a­mond pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in­dus­try, ever since the north­ern part of the coun­try was dis­cov­ered to be di­a­mond rich. The Ot­tawa-based Di­a­mond De­vel­op­ment Ini­tia­tive helps to reg­u­late the di­a­mond in­dus­try, and was set up in part to counter the move­ment of il­le­gal di­a­monds.

A sub­stan­tial per­cent­age of di­a­monds that are be­ing moved il­le­gal­ly around the world come from African coun­tries. The is­sue of so-called "blood di­a­monds" has been pop­u­larised by books, doc­u­men­taries and a Hol­ly­wood movie. Now the world knows that slave labour is be­ing used to mine the di­a­monds and then those di­a­monds are be­ing used to fi­nance vi­o­lent in­sur­gency move­ments. And oth­er dan­ger­ous ac­tiv­i­ties.

Chris­tine Duhaime is a Cana­di­an spe­cial­ist in fi­nan­cial crime and an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing. On her Web site she cites the rea­sons why di­a­monds are prefer­able to us­ing mon­ey to fund il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty. Di­a­monds "main­tain their val­ue, can be eas­i­ly moved across bor­ders vir­tu­al­ly with­out de­tec­tion and with­out hav­ing to de­clare them as part of a cross-bor­der cur­ren­cy trans­ac­tion."

Duhaime al­so post­ed that "be­cause they are per­son­al prop­er­ty, they are not read­i­ly sub­ject to con­fis­ca­tion by law en­force­ment and no cur­ren­cy ex­change is need­ed. Nor can they be traced back to the source; thus prov­ing they are pro­ceeds of crime is ex­ceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult."

This is rel­e­vant to the Cana­di­an con­text be­cause a re­cent re­port by the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force in­di­cates that Cana­da, de­spite hav­ing strin­gent laws to de­ter this type of smug­gling and laun­der­ing, has seen a num­ber of cas­es where di­a­monds were be­ing used as a type of cur­ren­cy for il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties.

The re­port, re­leased in Feb­ru­ary by the Paris-based in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal group, found that in Cana­da di­a­mond mon­ey-laun­der­ing schemes were ac­tive­ly be­ing used to hide fi­nan­cial as­sets, traf­fic drugs, and most dis­turbing­ly, fund ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty.

"Di­a­monds could...be used to fi­nance ter­ror­ism in a sce­nario where a donor or fi­nancier pur­chas­es di­a­monds le­git­i­mate­ly, us­ing law­ful­ly de­rived funds, and then trans­fers the di­a­monds to a ter­ror­ist or ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion who use the di­a­monds in ex­change for equip­ment or cash in­tend­ing to fi­nance ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties."

David M Lu­na heads an­ti-crime pro­grammes at the US De­part­ment of State and on Feb­ru­ary 26, he de­liv­ered a speech at a con­fer­ence in Mo­roc­co on the is­sue of se­cu­ri­ty in Africa. His pre­sen­ta­tion talked about il­lic­it traf­fick­ing of ma­te­ri­als, in­clud­ing di­a­monds, and how they were in­ter­twined with in­ter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ist net­works.

"Il­lic­it traf­fick­ing re­mains the lifeblood of the nu­mer­ous bad ac­tors and net­works, cre­at­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties for na­tions. We must crack down on cor­rup­tion at all lev­els and cut off the abil­i­ty of klep­to­crats, crim­i­nals and ter­ror­ists to en­joy the fruits of il­lic­it en­ter­prise that en­able the fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty to ex­e­cute their op­er­a­tions."

In the mean­time, Ms Bod­ner has ap­peared in a Toron­to court­room, charged with four cus­toms of­fences and two counts un­der the Ex­port and Im­port of Rough Di­a­monds Act. But we still don't know, and may nev­er know, who was on the oth­er end of the ship­ment, and what those pre­cious baubles were go­ing to fi­nance.

n Natasha Fa­tah is a writer, re­porter, and broad­cast­er based in Toron­to. Fol­low Natasha on twit­ter @NatashaFa­tah