China News Service, April 24. According to the website of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, in recent years, as the price of mineral resources continues to rise, some lawbreakers wantonly destroy the country's mineral resources in order to seek illegal benefits.
In the first quarter of 2022, procuratorial organs nationwide prosecuted 1,556 people for illegal mining and destructive mining crimes.
Such crimes have caused serious damage to natural resources and ecological environment, and harmed national interests and public interests. They should be severely cracked down in accordance with the law and comprehensively rectified.
Case handling found that the current type of crime mainly presents five characteristics.
First, the geographical features are obvious, and there are many types of minerals involved.
Judging from the illegal mining cases accepted by national procuratorial organs since 2021, such crimes are mainly concentrated in Shandong, Hebei, Guangdong, Henan, Fujian, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and other provinces with large mineral resources. A total of 58.4% of the country.
There are many types of mineral resources involved, including sand, coal, ore, graphite, rare earth, and peat soil.
Second, driven by huge profits, illegal illegal mining has been repeatedly banned.
Strong market demand has led to rising prices of mineral resources, while the technical content of the crime of illegal mining is relatively low.
Faced with huge profits and low crime costs, criminals do not hesitate to try the law and take risks.
For example, in the case of pirated sea sand mining, according to the reflected situation, the method of pirated mining of sea sand is simple, the transportation and storage are convenient, and there is a profit margin of tens of yuan between the water price and the arrival price of one ton of sea sand. Selling, the profit margin can reach hundreds of yuan.
According to the 3,000 to 5,000 tons carrying capacity of ordinary river ships, the total profit of one-time sea sand trafficking can reach hundreds of thousands of yuan.
In an illegal mining case of 23 persons handled by the Mawei District Procuratorate of Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, the criminals raised tens of millions of yuan to purchase 6 large sand mining ships, and pirated sea sand and sold them to Fujian, Zhejiang and other places.
Judging from the bank accounts involved and some of the WeChat transfer records, the illegal income in the past three years has reached 100 million yuan.
The 23 defendants in this case were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from one year, four months to ten years, and 50,000 to 3,000,000 yuan, respectively, by the court in the first instance for the crime of illegal mining, the crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble, the crime of gathering a crowd to fight, and the crime of opening a casino. RMB is not equal to fines.
A total of more than 20 million yuan of illegal gains were recovered in the whole case.
Third, there are various criminal means, and illegal stealing is more concealed.
Some criminals mine without approval from relevant departments or without a mining license.
Although some have obtained licenses, they maliciously mine beyond the scope, and even hide the illegal mining site by repairing while mining, and evade the supervision and investigation of relevant departments.
For example, in an illegal mining case handled by the Procuratorate of Haining City, Zhejiang Province, the criminals successively established two companies, obtained the mining rights of the two mining areas through auction, and obtained the mining license, which exceeded the scope of the license many times and violated the law Mining more than 1 million tons, involving a value of more than 26 million yuan.
In the end, the two units involved and the relevant responsible persons were recovered all their illegal gains, and were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from one to three years, and a fine ranging from 20,000 to 1 million yuan.
In addition, judging from the case handling by the procuratorial organs, the concealment of this type of crime has been increasing, and some criminals even wear legal cloaks to carry out illegal mining in disguise in the name of project construction, land reclamation and leveling, river regulation, and mine restoration and management.
For example, in an illegal mining case handled by the Procuratorate of Yong'an City, Fujian Province, the company involved hired workers to illegally mine quartz sand raw ore and process and sell it in the name of water, electricity, road, and land leveling in the company's workshop.
In another example, in an illegal mining case handled by the Zhangjiagang City Procuratorate of Jiangsu Province, criminals took advantage of the opportunity of decorating towers and laying landscapes to use excavators with others to excavate the mountain on the east side of Phoenix Mountain, a national 4A-level scenic spot, illegally mining more than 6,000 tons of rocks.
At present, the Zhangjiagang City Procuratorate has filed a criminal incidental civil public interest lawsuit with the court, suggesting that the defendant unit be fined, sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment, bear the legal responsibility for repairing the damaged mountain, and compensate for the loss of ecological environment resources.
Some even engage in illegal mining when participating in the restoration of the ecological environment of the illegal mining area.
For example, in an illegal mining case handled by the Beijing procuratorate, the suspect took the opportunity of participating in the restoration project of the illegal mining site to steal nearly 600 tons of pyrophyllite.
At present, all pyrophyllites involved in the case have been seized, and the Beijing procuratorate has filed a criminal incidental public interest lawsuit, suggesting that the defendant should be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment and bear civil responsibilities such as ecological environment restoration.
The fourth is to seriously damage the ecological environment and even cause safety accidents.
In this type of crime, most of the criminals carry out simple and crude predatory mining, which leads to vegetation destruction, soil erosion, exposed surface, soil desertification, etc. Environmental damage is enormous.
For example, the illegal mining of sand and gravel in important waterways such as the Yangtze River and the Yellow River will directly change the shape of the original river bed, resulting in changes to the navigation conditions of the original waterway, affecting navigation safety, flood control safety and river stability.
In order to maximize profits, pirates even illegally use prohibited chemicals in mining, which not only seriously damages mineral resources and the ecological environment, but also easily leads to major safety accidents that cause casualties.
Procuratorial organs in Beijing, Shanxi, Henan and other places have handled many cases of illegal mining of organic cyanide.
Fifth, the scale of crime forms is often intertwined with underworld forces.
This type of criminal gang generally has a large number of people and a clear division of labor, forming a one-stop industrial chain of "mining, transportation and sales".
Some local cases have found that because of the huge economic benefits, underworld forces are often involved.
For example, in a case of a triad organization handled by the Procuratorate of Fuliang County, Jiangxi Province, the criminal suspect obtained the right to dredging a river in the name of a company, and under the cover of dredging, he formed illegal control through violence and threats, and wooed and corrupted state officials to evade supervision. , Illegal sand mining for more than 10 years, grabbing more than 200 million yuan in illegal profits, causing serious damage to river safety and ecological resources.
In the second instance, the 21 defendants in this case were convicted by the court of organizing, leading, and participating in a triad organization, illegal mining, picking quarrels and provoking trouble, extortion, bribery, major liability accident, concealing and deliberately destroying accounting vouchers and accounting books. The crime, money laundering, was sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 13 years to one year and three months, and a fine of 6.22 million yuan. The organization and leaders were also sentenced to confiscation of all personal property and deprivation of political rights for two years.
Procuratorial organs across the country will insist on performing their duties proactively in accordance with the law, take multiple measures to punish the crime of stealing and mining industrial resources, promote comprehensive rectification, promote source-based governance, long-term governance, and safeguard lucid waters and lush mountains.
The first is to strengthen cooperation and cooperation, and make precise strikes in accordance with the law.
Carry out special rectification actions in the field of natural resources, crack down on crimes in the field of mineral resources, supervise the handling of major cases, and severely punish "sand masters" and "mine masters".
Make full use of the connection platform between administrative law enforcement and criminal justice to realize information sharing, timely report case handling information, transfer case leads, and gradually build a work pattern of "government responsibility, departmental linkage, and source governance".
The second is to give full play to the procuratorial function of "criminal prosecution + public interest litigation".
If the criminal act of destroying mineral resources causes damage to social and public interests, criminal responsibility shall be investigated for the crime of illegal mining and a fine shall be imposed, and a criminal incidental civil public interest lawsuit or civil public interest lawsuit shall be filed in accordance with the law, and it shall be ordered to compensate for the national mineral resources caused by illegal mining. The damaged ecological environment shall be restored within a specified period of time.
The third is to strengthen the participation of the whole people and increase the promotion of law popularization.
Implement the law popularization responsibility of "who enforces the law and who popularizes the law", and actively carries out law popularization publicity.
Publish typical cases to promote the public to raise environmental awareness and law-abiding awareness.