Chinese businessman who bought and ate three tigers is jailed for 13 years

A Chinese businessman who bought and ate three tigers has been sentenced to 13 years in prison, China's state media reported on Tuesday.

The wealthy real estate developer, identified only by his surname Xu, had “a special hobby of grilling tiger bones, boning tiger paws, storing tiger penis, eating tiger meat and drinking tiger-blood alcohol,” the official Xinhua news agency reported in June when he went on trial.

Xu organised three trips last year for 15 people, including himself, to Leizhou in the southern province of Guangdong, where they bought tigers for a “huge amount of money” that were killed and dismembered as they watched, government-run news portal Gxnews.com.cn reported on Tuesday.

One of them filmed the entire process of a tiger being slaughtered. The footage, on his mobile phone, was later seized by police.

Police seized eight pieces of animal meat and bones from a refrigerator in Xu’s home, some of which were later identified as tiger parts, including a penis, the report said, adding that 16 geckos and a cobra were also found.

A court in Guangxi earlier this year convicted the 15 people of “illegally transporting precious and endangered wild animal products” but the conviction was not reported at the time.