Jamil Sahid Mohamed Khalil (1936 - 2000) was a Sierra Leonean-Lebanese businessman, diamonds and commodities trader. He attained prominence in the diamond industry across Africa and Antwerp and became an influential figure in the politics of Sierra Leone through his close association with President Siaka Stevens. Jamil also came to dominate other business sectors including fisheries, tourism construction and aviation. In 1987, he and several prominent politicians, including Vice President Francis Minah, were implicated, convicted and sentenced to death in the failed assassination plot against President Joseph Momoh. Jamil escaped and was exiled from Sierra Leone. He returned to Freetown before leaving it again during the 1999 RUF invasion. Early life Jamil was born in Freetown in 1936 to a Sierra Leonean mother and a Lebanese father. Career Jamil Sahid Mohamed Khalil built his vast fortune by exporting diamonds to Antwerp during the seventies and eighties. He was arguably the most successful Lebanese trader in West Africa. As a result of his activities, he was considered one of the richest and most powerful men in Africa along with then-President Siaka Stevens. Association with Siaka Stevens Jamil found a kindred spirit in President Siaka Stevens who was equally keen to exploit Sierra Leone's gold and diamonds resource for personal gain. In Sierra Leone's post-colonial era, Siaka Stevens association with Jamil Sahid Mohamed Khalil would have a dramatic effect on government policy. Both of them would, for a time, count themselves among Africa's wealthiest men. The alliance of Stevens and Jamil was one of convenience. Stevens had access but as a head of state he was prohibited from engaging in commerce. Jamil became a beneficiary of the kleptocracy established by President Siaka Stevens. His stewardship of the president's personal finances made him the second most powerful man in Sierra Leone. Together they plunged the economy of the fledgling nation in to a state of economic chaos. Jamil encouraged Stevens to ally himself with the Lebanese merchant community who controlled a portion of the official diamond trade and also ran the majority of the unofficial diamond trade. Stevens supported illegal diamond smuggling so much so that on 3 November 1969, $3.4 million worth of the Sierra Leonean government's monthly production of diamonds vanished, allegedly at the order of Stevens and Jamil. The president granted Jamil's National Trading Company a monopoly to import more than eighty-seven commodities. and turned a blind eye as Jamil