The story involves so-called conflict diamonds, illicitly mined stones that have been used to finance some of the most vicious wars in Africa.
(Indeed, the arms race for "friends" is so intense that some artists illicitly employ software robots that generate hundreds of fake online comrades, artificially boosting their numbers).
If Vice President Al Gore wins the presidency, the Republicans say, he will do so because unclearly marked ballots were illicitly counted in heavily Democratic counties by cynical Democratic officials who guessed at voters' intentions with eyes cocked toward how many votes he needed.
It calls for legal protections for so-called house churches, which operate illicitly outside the government-run religious system.
Official interest rates for savers are so low – negative in real terms – that lending illicitly is much more attractive than putting your money in the bank.
Mr de la Calle suggests limiting the time allowed for electoral campaigning, so that politicians see less need to finance themselves illicitly.
Interspersed are tidbits of local folklore, history and legend, such as accounts of "wild men" a bit like Bigfoot in the American Northwest, of the Taoist monks who illicitly celebrate their beliefs in remote temples and of qichun snakes so deadly that a person will drop dead within five steps of having been bitten.
Eyewitness records of the speeches and manoeuvrings of Deng Xiaoping and his comrades, illicitly smuggled out, unfold a more graphic inside picture of high politics than any I've seen, so soon after the events, from any western democracy.
In 2010, fans were so eager to get their hands on an e-book version of "2666" that someone illicitly created a.txt file of it and posted it on the Internet.
A messy argument about treatment of indigenous people is probably the last thing De Beers needed, with the global diamond business facing a global economic slowdown and only just emerging from another controversy, over so-called conflict diamonds -- rough stones mined in war-torn regions and sold illicitly to finance rebellions and civil wars.
