Fake Aboriginal Art company slapped with $2.3 million fine – 9News

An Australian business caught selling fake Aboriginal art has been fined $2.3 million dollars in a federal court ruling today, highlighting a thriving black-market that exploits and expropriates Indigenous culture.

Brisbane company Birubi Art was found to have breached Australian consumer law and to have misled its customers by promoting products as genuine Aboriginal art when thousands of its pieces were in fact made in factories in Indonesia.

The penalty is the largest of its kind ever awarded by the Federal Court and comes after a 2018 60 Minutes investigation that exposed the Australian businesses importing fake artefacts from Indonesia to sell in Australian souvenir stores.