The Diamond Trade: Great Rewards Attract Dangerous Risk

GREAT REWARDS 

ATTRACT DANGEROUS RISK

Gil Devos with his wife, Nina. His daughter, my friends and I hosted Gill at Lake Keystone in Odessa, Fl recently to work on the book and play in the lake.

The life and times of Gil Devos is chronicled in my next book, A DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH. The book will be released in June from Mountain Springs House publishing. The story is about a man from Brussels, Belgium who walks into an Antwerp diamond district merchant’s office and lands a job because he did not know a thing about diamonds.  

Gil had trained to be a mercenary and worked out for months with Claude Goetz, the karate instructor who taught Jean Claude VanDamme. In fact, after quitting a job as an advertising agent prior to that, Gil became a beer distributor in the jungle of Central Africa. Gil probably would have been fighting some tribal lord’s personal war in another remote country had he not accepted the beer distribution job.

This is not the story of a rich kid that goes to college and becomes a success just to please his father. Gil didn’t know his parents very well. A loving grandmother raised him. He struggled to find good jobs. His good looks and “street smart” ways led him to eventually become one of the premier diamond buyers in the business. The merchants of Antwerp taught him well. He learned the craft and the dangerous business of buying rough diamonds from the people who actually flushed the stones out of the mud, rocks and rivers of South America and Central Africa. He made millions for himself and billions for his sponsoring employers in Antwerp.

The unsavory and dangerous part of the diamond business also cost many lives, as great risk always does. It ruins careers and governments as well. Diamonds have also cost Gil well over two million dollars to learn who to trust, and who not to trust.

The book is in the hands of Lee Porche, my very capable and demanding editor. After the manuscript was finished, my friend, retired bush buyer Gil Devos took off on another risky adventure to Sierra Leone, Africa. At 78 years old, he is not much of a trained mercenary anymore. But the lure of an eighteen million dollar potential diamond buy has once again dragged him out of retirement. It could be big. It could be a waste of time. It could be deadly. I can’t wait t see how this adventure unfolds.