Wilpshire man in attempted £180,000 rhino horns smuggle

And now Donald Allison, 62, whose most recent address was given in court as Wilpshire, has been jailed for 12 months.

Allison told border agency staff at Manchester Airport he was taking the Vienna bronze sculpture of a bird on a log to a friend in China who had bought it in the UK for £2,000.

Hidden inside the false resin log were two rhino horns wrapped in cling film and tape.

They were destined for the lucrative Far East medicine market where powdered horn is believed to cure cancer – with one kilo fetching up to 30,000 US dollars.

The horns were removed from the body of Simba, a 41-year-old Southern African rhinoceros, who was humanely destroyed at Colchester Zoo in April 2009.

It was not known who removed the horns weighing more than nine kilos before Simba’s body was disposed of at a waste incinerator by a local firm, Manchester Crown Court heard.

Using DNA samples a UK Border Agency investigation team was able to trace the horns back to Simba by matching blood samples still held by the zoo.

Jonathan Savage, prosecuting, said Allison, formerly of Ingelwhite, Preston, said Allison told officials he was taking the statue to a man called Mr Payne who he had met at antique fairs in London.

“He said he was an experienced antiques dealer and had inspected the statue and was satisfied it was bronze,” Mr Savage said.

“The statue was examined by experts and was found clearly not to be a Vienna bronze. A person of Mr Allison’s position will have known that it was not a real object.”

Allison pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to the attempted exportation of horns from an endangered species.

Jed Doran, defending, told the court his client was ‘not instrumental in obtaining the horns.

“He was a link in the chain – a vital link – but he is not behind the org-anisation of the enterprise”, Mr Doran said.

Allison, who had no previous convictions, had been declared bankrupt, Mr Doran said.