50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 566 A Warning Letter
Sun Zhiwei was surprised by Harry Oppenheimer's choice, but he wasn't afraid. Tong Jiajia had already returned to China, so he had no flaws now.

Shops, stores, estates, and companies are not what he cares about. Instead, he has too many weaknesses that De Beers has exposed, and he doesn't know where to start dealing with them.

After thinking for a while, he decided to go directly to South Africa, where De Beers’ main diamond mining areas are located.

Every year, most of the rough diamonds mined around the world are gathered at De Beers in South Africa for a "viewing event".

Therefore, although De Beers' headquarters are in London, their business is mainly conducted in South Africa.

Upon learning of the plight of Guili Jewelry, Sun Zhiwei made a decisive decision to give all the jewelry store employees a month of paid annual leave and to store all the jewelry in the store in a safe.

He didn't have time to get entangled with De Beers in New York. To strike at the heart of the matter, he changed his identity the next day and boarded a plane to Johannesburg.

De Beers' headquarters in Johannesburg is located at 2135 Diamond Road.

This area houses De Beers' main operations in Africa and is divided into several functional zones, including an administrative area, a processing area, an exhibition hall, and a trading post.

After getting off the plane, Sun Zhiwei went straight to the South African headquarters.

Because of De Beers' dominant position in the diamond industry over the past decades, their headquarters here has been built in a magnificent style.

De Beers' diamond exhibition hall is open to the public free of charge. Sun Zhiwei bought a ticket and went directly into their headquarters exhibition hall.

This exhibition not only displays information on the precious diamonds that De Beers has mined over the years, but also features a number of ready-made diamonds on display.

After walking around the area, he figured out the layout; the exhibition hall in front was only a small part of it.

Upstairs is the administrative area, which is not open to the public. It manages De Beers' hundreds of diamond mines around the world and is also responsible for the planning and profit distribution of the entire industry.

There are not only administrative buildings here, but also many logistics area buildings behind them.

For example, there is a large area in the northeast where De Beers' security headquarters and training camp are located.

They train security personnel here and are also responsible for sending security personnel to all diamond mining areas, or for armed escorting companies' diamonds to destinations around the world.

They have their own private jets, which can directly transport large quantities of diamonds to every city in the world with a market and an airport.

To the northwest is De Beers' own processing facility, which holds many high-value rough diamonds that they process themselves rather than selling cheaply to agents around the world.

What attracted Sun Zhiwei the most was the vault in the basement of the headquarters building, which contained a large number of exquisite diamonds accumulated by De Beers over the years.

They will rationally allocate the number of diamonds released into the market each year based on the market conditions.

If we compare diamonds to grain, then the inventory here is like a 'long-term storage' to stabilize prices.

When the industry is in a slump, they store the excess diamonds in underground vaults.

If the industry is booming, they will take out previously stored diamonds to meet increased market demand.

The diamond market has been quite hot in recent years, and almost every gem-quality diamond mined each year can find a buyer.

This has made the entire diamond industry flourish, and even the number of diamonds stored underground here is decreasing year by year.

Even so, Sun Zhiwei found the diamond inventory in the underground vault to be quite terrifying.

He estimated that the total amount of gem-quality diamonds in the inventory here was around 800 million carats. This is roughly twice the current total annual production of gem-quality diamonds worldwide, and its total value exceeds 20 billion US dollars.

This $20 billion figure refers to the wholesale price. The retail price, depending on the diamond's quality and size, can be several to dozens of times higher.

Sun Zhiwei's purpose in coming here was precisely this. He immediately opened up his spatial dimension, swept away the 800 million carats of diamonds underground, and then turned around and left.

He believed that the theft of these ballast diamonds would soon throw the South African headquarters into chaos.

In the future, if De Beers wants to suppress its competitors and engage in price wars, it will no longer have a lot of leverage.

To Sun Zhiwei's delight, De Beers has yet to develop anti-counterfeiting marking technology for its diamonds.

Therefore, once these diamonds leave their hands, it becomes difficult to determine their origin, which allows Sun Zhiwei to sell them off in batches later.

After leaving De Beers' South African headquarters, he went to the Premier Mine and cut off a large portion of the mine's vein.

After that, he controlled 80% of the total reserves of the Premier Mine.

Even if he loses the diamond mines in Borneo, he can always find an ordinary diamond mine and start over.

In South Africa, he has undermined De Beers's foundation and his next move is to threaten Harry Oppenheimer's family.

That night, he sneaked into the Oppenheimer family estate from underground and left a note of greeting on the pillows of several of Harry's immediate family members.

The note simply read: "Mr. James of New York Magnificent Jewels sends his regards to Mr. Harry Oppenheimer."

This is not a Christmas greeting, but a blatant threat.

As Harry's old residence, the Oppenheimer family estate has extremely tight security measures.

If Sun Zhiwei didn't have the space to dig a tunnel underground, he wouldn't have been able to get close to this place based on his real skills.

That night, Harry's son, Nicky Oppenheimer, was the first to discover the note. After a moment's thought, he summoned the captain of the manor's guard.

The captain of the guard turned ashen-faced when he saw the note and its location.

Soon after, they found the same note next to the pillow of every family member in the manor.

At this moment, the captain of the guard's face was no longer just pale, but filled with despair.

He was responsible for training the guard team and for developing the security measures.

He has been working in security for more than a year or two, and he believes that even if you search the whole world, there are better security teams than them, but they are very rare.

However, today's enemy, under the protection of the patrol team, moved through the manor as if it were empty, strolling through every main room without being detected by the patrolling guards.

He no longer cares how powerful the enemy is; this is a serious dereliction of duty by the guards, and they may very well lose their secure job.

The guards' despair highlighted the enemy's strength. The fact that the enemy could move freely in the manor demonstrated both Sun Zhiwei's formidable abilities and his restraint.

(End of this chapter)