pair were found carrying 17.9 kilograms<\/a> of the stone in their luggage at Auckland International Airport in July 2024.<\/p>\nUnder the Customs Export Prohibition (Pounamu) Order 2021, it is illegal for a single exporter to take more than 5kg of raw pounamu out of New Zealand without proper consent.<\/p>\n
Judge Richard McIlraith acknowledged the defendants may not have properly understood the law, but emphasised \u201cignorance of the law is no defence to this charge\u201d. <\/p>\n
Defendants Boyuan Zhang and his mother Xin Li were not travelling alone at the time. <\/p>\n
Zhang earlier told the court he believed the weight of the pounamu he and his mother were carrying could be shared between others in their group, even if they weren\u2019t physically carrying stones. <\/p>\n
Central to the case was the meaning of \u201csingle exporter\u201d. <\/p>\n
A mother and son have been\u00a0on trial in the Manukau District Court.\u00a0 (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
During closing submissions last week, prosecution lawyer Anna Devasathan addressed this point. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf Your Honour prefers the prosecution submissions, that is a single exporter, and that is the only meaning of that term, then the defendants are responsible for all of that pounamu.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut even if Your Honour were to prefer my learned friend’s submissions and treat either of the defendants as single exporters in their own right, I want to stress that that does not lead to an approach where the total amount of pounamu is divided by three or by four.\u201d <\/p>\n
She said the evidence, which included \u201ctext messages\u201d and \u201cchanging accounts\u201d, showed \u201cthey were actively and deliberately taking steps to evade the rules\u201d. <\/p>\n
Just two months earlier, Zhang\u2019s father and Li\u2019s husband, Jiangbo Zhang, had also been caught with pounamu in his possession <\/p>\n
Customs discovered and seized two stones in his luggage weighing 61kg in total, but the boarding gate closed before the agency could speak with him.<\/p>\n
While not a party to the case, Ng\u0101i Tahu holds legal ownership of all naturally occurring pounamu within its tribal boundaries under the Ng\u0101i Tahu (Pounamu Vesting) Act 1997.<\/p>\n
Exporting pounamu in quantities over 5kg is only permitted with the approval of the Customs Minister, following advice from Ng\u0101i Tahu.<\/p>\n
For raw pounamu sourced from the Arahura River, any export exceeding this limit requires consent from the Mawhera Incorporation, a group representing the area\u2019s original M\u0101ori landowners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mother and son have been found guilty of attempting to illegally export pounamu to China over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[67,4432,111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-357531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-crime-and-justice","9":"tag-maori-issues","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}