A Tanzanian artisanal miner has become a millionaire after finding two of the largest fragments of Tanzanite, a rare gemstone, and having sold them to his country's government. Saniniu Kuryan Laizer, 52, found the gems, weighing 9.27 and 5.1 kilos, in the Mererani Mountains, an area that two years ago the Tanzanian President, John Magufuli, had decided to surround with a wall to control production and fight illegal exports. The miner has sold the pieces for 7.7 billion shillings, about 2.9 million euros.
Tanzanite, a blue and purple colored gemstone, is only found in the Mererani Mountains near Mount Kilimanjaro. Its export is mainly directed to India.
To celebrate the discovery, the Government organized a reception in the town of Manyara in which the country's Minister of Mines, Doto Biteko, assured that the stones were the largest ever discovered. "Now we have gone from a situation in which the small miners were engaged in the Tanzanian traffic to another in which the procedures are respected, and taxes are paid," he said. The miner, Laizer, stated that he will dedicate the money to help the development of his town. "I plan to build a shopping center in Arusha and a school near my home," he said.
The jewelry company Le Vian, which during the 1980s and 1990s bought half of all Tanzanian production, has pointed out that the amount paid to Laizer is only a small part of its market value. "Although the $ 3 million paid to the miner has undoubtedly changed his life forever, it is only one-twentieth of his potential market value," Eddie Le Vian, the company's deputy general manager, said in a statement. in which he stressed the difficulty of extracting the gems.
In a Twitter message, the Tanzanian government has assured that the stones will be kept in the country's national museum.
In 2018, when the army began to build the wall of more than 24 kilometers around the Merenani mines, the country's president estimated at 40% the part of Tanzanian production that was lost due to contraband. Merenani, who has been in power since 2015, has applied an iron fist policy to the large foreign mining companies operating in Tanzania and accused them of underestimating the amounts of gold, diamonds or Tanzanite, and of causing the State to lose tens of Billions of dollars in taxes and fees since 1998.
A paralegal report published in September 2017 claimed that the extraction of the Tanzanian mainly benefited traffickers due to the prevailing corruption in the sector and unfavorable contracts. That same year, the country passed new legislation that imposed on foreign companies the obligation to give the State 16% of each of their mining projects.
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