A businesswoman caught selling shawls made from rare antelopes was given a three-month suspended jail term and $300,000 fine yesterday in what wildlife campaigners said was a triumph for animal protection.
Bharati Ashok Assomull, 50, was told her punishment for dealing in shahtoosh shawls worth more than $500,000 had to send a message to the world community.
'Hong Kong has an international obligation - it's a signatory to the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species,' Magistrate David John Dufton said in North Kowloon Court. 'And if one is to seriously carry out this obligation, a deterrent sentence has to be imposed so traders know this kind of conduct will not be accepted.' Assomull denied possessing a highly endangered species for sale as 130 shahtoosh shawls in the Furama Hotel in December 1997. Three or four endangered Tibetan antelopes are killed to make one shawl.
Mr Dufton said she was selling the shawls for $579,000 - double what she paid for them in New Delhi.
While she had claimed not to know the shawls were shahtoosh, the magistrate said she should have tried to find out.
'You failed by a long way; you simply took no steps to inquire.' Judy Mills, director of Traffic East Asia which monitors trade in wild animals, said the sentence was ammunition for globally fighting the trade in endangered species.