The largest rough diamond in the world was bought by the British jeweler Laurence Graff for 53 million dollars (45 million euros) from the Canadian company Lucara Diamond. The Lucara diamond mining group, in a tweet, said it was "happy" to announce the sale of the 1.109-carat diamond. Graff Diamonds, Laurence Graff's company, specified in a note that the negotiations on the sale lasted a year.
"Our team of highly skilled craftsmen with many years of experience will work day and night to ensure that justice is done to this extraordinary gift from Mother Nature," said Graff. The precious stone had been auctioned in June 2016 at Sotheby's in London but had not found a buyer at the time, because it had not reached the reserve price of 70 million dollars. The diamond the size of a small tennis ball and named "Lesedi La Rona" ("our light" in the Tswana language) was discovered in November 2015 by Lucara in Botswana, a country that has become the second largest diamond producer after Russia.
It is the largest diamond discovered in over 100 years and the first of this size to be offered at auction. The historic record for the largest diamond in the world is still held by the legendary 3.016,75-carat "Cullinan", discovered in 1905 in South Africa. It was then transformed into nine diamonds for the British Crown Jewels. On the same day as the discovery of the "Lesedi La Rona", another 830-carat stone was found in Botswana, the third largest diamond in the world.
