Summary
The Correspondent Office of the Belgian Diamond Industry (COFDI), established in London in October 1940 by the Antwerp merchants Romi Goldmuntz and Herman Schamisso, with the help of Antwerp mayor Camille Huysmans and Camille Gutt, finance minister of the Belgian government-in-exile, to safeguard Belgian diamond interests after the German occupation (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.79).
Details
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Using the diamonds the British seized during the 1940 sea blockade, the project installed diamonds at De Beers vaults to be guarded until the end of the war (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.79).
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It maintained contacts among the diamond refugees in the various centers and helped them materially and mentally so they would return to Belgium after the war, and lobbied persistently against enlarging rough-diamond supplies to Palestine and New York (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.80).
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Its lobbying at the DTC, where Palestine’s steady supplies were decided, threatened Palestine with a “diamond famine” without PDMA regimentation (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.80).
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The politics of limited expansion the Belgians and COFDI practiced in London fueled Palestine’s sense of urgency and kept up the tense atmosphere around Belgium’s return until late 1944 (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.88).
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In 1943 it became ever more vocal and openly used the lever of the Belgian Congo minerals to curtail further developments in the various cutting centers, and in December 1943 it announced great victories over the industries of Palestine and Brazil (printed “CODFI” at both locators) (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.143, p.147).
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At the turn of 1944 COFDI stepped up pressure on the Belgian government-in-exile to accumulate more Congo diamond reserves, and the Belgians threatened that continuous Congo industrial-diamond supply would depend on further limiting supplies to other cutting centers; the text prints its name “CODFI” again in this passage (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.148).
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The liberation of Belgium was COFDI’s (printed “CODFI”) “finest hour”; its reserves began to be used from winter 1945 in the gradual recuperation of the diamond industry, though quicker recovery was hampered by the German bombardment that lingered until March 1945 (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.200).
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The transition from British control over the diamond industry and its revival to the Belgian Diamond Office was fully completed in July 1945; Romi Goldmuntz arrived back in Belgium only in March 1945 and the distribution of COFDI’s (printed “CODFI”) reserves among the dealers and manufacturers started only a few weeks later (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.205).