Dubai Economic Department officials have raided a shop and confiscated several skins of endangered animals being sold illegally in defiance of international laws, the Gulf News reported Sunday.
Shopkeepers had admitted to a reporter that the skins were genuine and had been illegally smuggled into the UAE without the necessary certificates from the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), to which the UAE is a signatory, the paper said.
An Economic Department spokesman was quoted by the daily as saying, "the products have been removed and investigations are being carried out on the tiger skins to verify whether they are real or fake. We suspect they may not be genuine because the price was so low." -- Albawaba.com
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