Australia-South Africa - Argyle Diamonds
Australia - South Africa - Argle Diamonds
When our lawyers left CRA (now Rio Tinto) and set up our firm, we continued to do work on the Argyle Diamond Project. We had been involved in setting up the joint venture and the sales negotiations with De Beers and its Central Selling Organisation, and especially the breakthrough negotiations between Sir Russel Madigan and Harry Oppenheimer. This broke the monopoly of the CSO to permit Argyle to sell independently into the market. Our lawyers drafted the landmark sales contracts for those diamond sales which involved working in Australia, Europe and South Africa.