For the second year in a row, a sightholder has won the right to open the Diamond Trading Company’s first allocation of the year.

Lalji Patel, group chairman of DTC sightholder Dharmanandan Diamonds, “opened” the sight and received a behind the scenes tour of the DTC, because of his donation to the Diamond Empowerment Fund at the DEF’s “Diamonds in the Sky” fundraising event in September 2011.

“The vision and values of both NGOs benefitting from the ‘Diamonds in the Sky’ auction fit perfectly with our own,” Patel said in a statement. “Our company has an integrated corporate social responsibility program both for the benefit of our employees as well as for the benefit of the communities in which we operate. We contribute significantly in areas of education and medication. We have built two schools in rural areas and are firmly committed to the development of our youth, and are very excited to have had the opportunity to support the empowerment of the next generation in southern Africa and China, too.”

Last year, sightholder Erez Daleyot won the right to open the sight.

JCK