Hisham Mackie

Hisham Mackie (born in 1969 in Freetown, Sierra Leone) is a multimillionaire Sierra Leonean businessman. He is by far the biggest diamond exporter from Sierra Leone, acounting for 51% of all official Sierra Leone diamond exports. He is the richest Sierra Leonean with an estimated worth of US$ 68.0 million.

Biography

Hisham Mackie was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1969, Lebanese family which has been in the diamond business since the great diamond rush of the 1950s. He attended the Bo Government Secondary School in Bo, Sierra Leone, and took a management course at the [[University of London]] in the 1980s. His father, a second generation Sierra Leonean-Lebanese, was among the first diamond dealers licensed in the country. The young Mackie joined the diamond business in 2002 as an export license holder.

A week before the Annual Review met him at his office in Freetown in September 2003, Mackie had been apprehended by Belgian customs officials for carrying $500,000 in cash. It was the same week that Belgian authorities arrested several Lebanese diamond traders on suspicion of diamond smuggling and money laundering. Mackie was released when he showed that the money was part of funds acquired through the legitimate sale of certified diamonds in Antwerp, Belgium which he was taking to Sierra Leone for more diamond transactions.