cover story
The Cyprus Connection
Loucas Christos Pouroulis, whose first job was that
of Assistant manager at the Kalavasos copper mine
in 1962, went to South Africa with a degree in metallurgy and engineering from the National Technical
University of Greece and worked as an underground
manager at Anglo American’s Western Deep Levels
between 1965 and 1971. By 1977 he had founded the
Salene Group of Companies, which has throughout its
life produced gold, platinum, diamonds, titanium and
emeralds. He later founded Kameni Limited and is a
director of the company, he serves as a Non Executive Director of Tharisa Minerals (Pty) Ltd and as a
director of Eland Platinum Holdings Limited.
Adonis Loucas Pouroulis founded Petra Diamonds in
that may sound like a fairly logical
addition, this one comes with an interesting additional Greek connection.
“Loucas Pouroulis is one of the world
leaders in the diamond business so there
could be a huge display of diamonds
from all his mines in South Africa and
elsewhere. It would be like a vault or
a huge safe into which visitors go and
see the gems. It would be a tremendous
collection of diamonds and diamond
history. Secondly, I have 25 years of
photographs, some 200,000 slides and
videos of going into the mine shafts,
etc., and mining rubies, sapphires and
all the coloured gemstones. So Pouroulis
is a leader when it comes to diamonds
and he’s a Cypriot. I am a leader in the
coloured stones business and I’m Greek
American. The leader in the pearls industry is Nick Paspaley who happens
to be Greek as well, the son of Nicholas
Paspaley MBE who founded Paspaley
Pearls. Nick is considered the father of
the modern pearling industry and he’s
built his company into a $200 million
export business. He’s a multimillionaire
himself and I know he’d be delighted
to be a part of the museum and to have
somewhere to sell his pearls too.”
A world-class museum would certainly be a great tourist attraction that visitors would go to see thanks to the Diamond Exchange but it is only one part
of Melas’ vision. He spent four years
working at the Gemological Institute
of America (GIA) which is considered
to be the “Harvard” of diamonds, gemstones and jewellery. He also worked for
Swarovski who gave the GIA $4 million
and created the “Tower of Brilliance” on
its campus, which comprises the world’s
largest crystal octahedron, resembling
the shape of a natural diamond crystal.
The octahedron is composed of an outer
1997 which was first listed on London’s Alternative
Investment Market later that year. It transferred to
the main market in December 2011 and is listed on
the FTSE250. He has been its Non-Executive Chairman since November 28, 2011. He was influential in
the founding, development and listing of a number of
other natural resources companies.
In October 2008, Petra recovered a 26 carat blue
stone at its Cullinan mine. This important diamond
yielded a cushion-shaped cut stone of just over 7 carats which was sold for US$9.49 million, which at the
time was the world record price per carat achieved for
any gemstone at auction. This exceptional blue is now
known as The Star of Josephine.
glass structure resembling the diamond
crystal shape, with a metallic replica of
a round brilliant-cut diamond inside.
Motorized, it rotates slowly to reflect
light—natural sunlight during the day and
spotlights at night—much the way a diamond reflects light through its facets. The
octahedron was designed by Swarovski’s
lighting division, which also created “The
Cross of Light” on display at the Basilica
di Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri
in the Vatican.
What does this have to do with Cyprus?
Melas explains:
“The centre for the diamond trade in
Europe is Antwerp but it is controlled
– gemologically speaking – by HRD
Laboratories, a Belgium-based laboratory for diamonds, and HRD Education.
Because Antwerp is home to HRD, it’s
been very difficult for GIA to find a place
in Belgium, even though it is the leading
laboratory in the world. So why not have
a GIA lab (which grades the diamonds for
those who are cutting them and trading
them) and school for the Middle East in
Cyprus? The students would have access to the gems in the museum and, in
particular, it would expose the African
students to Cyprus and its culture so that
later on, when they have rough diamonds
to put on the market they will use Cyprus.
This kind of thing creates great relations.
And, of course, you can then go to people
like Swarovski and offer them a section in
the museum in return for helping build an
iconic tower.”
The Exchange building would also have
a helipad on the roof (“You need a direct
path from Larnaca for the diamonds and
a passenger helicopter that works only for
the Exchange”) and apartments for those
working there, plus branches of the major
international banks the diamond dealers use, specialist Kosher, Arabic, Indian
and Chinese restaurants and, above all
security.
“A project such as this needs the highest
level of security in the world,” says Yianni
Melas.
And once all the details are worked out,
the only problem is one of working out
a tax regime which needs to be viewed
in the long term rather than for possible
s