Ex-Head of Mandela Children's Fund Cleared in Diamond Case

Ractliffe received the diamonds from Campbell after she got them as a gift from former Liberian president Charles Taylor.

Her testimony at Taylor's trial revealed what she gave the diamonds to Ractliffe. Subsequently he had been charged with violating laws against possessing rough diamonds, which requires a license in South Africa.

A Johannesburg magistrate court ruled that Ractliffe had no case to answer because prosecutors had failed to provide enough evidence to back the charges.

"Mr Ractliffe, you are not guilty and the case is discharged," said magistrate Renier Boshoff after a two-hour trial.

Ractliffe had pleaded not guilty. "I did not know that they were diamonds. I merely knew that they were said to be diamonds," he said in a statement to the court.

He received the diamonds in 1997, a day after a fund raising event was held for the fund, attended by Taylor, Campbell and Mandela, among many others. The model testified that three men gave her the diamonds after the event, and that she handed them to Ractliffe as a donation.

He kept the stones in a safe for 13 years, surrendering them to police after Campbell's court appearance last year and at the same time resigned from the fund's board.

All along Ractliffe claimed that he kept the diamonds hidden only to protect the name of Mandela's charity. "In the end I decided I should just keep them," he said.

Taylor is on trial at The Hague for arming Sierra Leone rebels who paid him in diamonds. Those goods were later known as Blood or Conflict Diamonds.