Food safety is related to the health and life safety of the people. For food safety, General Secretary Xi Jinping used four "most": "Use the most rigorous standards, the strictest supervision, the most severe punishment, and the most serious accountability to ensure the safety of the people." "The procuratorial organs strictly implement the "four strictest" requirements, severely punish in accordance with the law, crack down on the crime of producing and selling toxic and harmful food in the whole chain, and continuously improve the people's sense of gain, happiness and security. Today, the Procuratorate Daily and Der Spiegel published the case stories of the Shanghai and Sichuan procuratorates cracking down on the production and sale of toxic and harmful food in accordance with the law and comprehensively safeguarding the rights and interests of consumers, hoping to remind everyone to prevent food and drug safety risks through real cases.
More than 30 unsafe foods have been removed from the shelves
Shanghai Railway Inspection: Combined with the case handling to the e-commerce platform involved in the case
Formulate and issue procuratorial recommendations to supervise the implementation of rectification
On April 12, with the fall of the gavel, the Shanghai Railway Transport Procuratorate (hereinafter referred to as the "Shanghai Railway Inspection Institute") handled a case of production and sale of toxic and harmful food, and the illegal business operation case was finally settled, and the court ruled to reject the appeal of the main culprit Wu and uphold the original verdict. At present, all judgments have entered into force.
In order to escape the crackdown, the criminal gang headed by Wu set up production and storage dens in Qinghai, Zhejiang, and Fujian, and shipped toxic and harmful food to sales dens in Shandong, and the sales team gradually developed dealers in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Hebei, Fujian and other places through chat software, and posted false advertisements on the Internet to attract traffic, and sold the food involved in the case to all parts of the country through the e-commerce platform. The prosecutor handling the case said that Wu and others had a strong sense of anti-investigation, separated production, supply and marketing, purchased anti-testing raw materials, falsified test reports, and sold toxic and harmful food through hidden channels on the Internet, which increased the difficulty of investigation and crackdown. To this end, the Shanghai Railway Inspection Institute intervened in advance to guide the investigation in accordance with the law, and punished the crime of endangering food safety in the whole chain. On March 14, the case was selected as a typical case of the procuratorate punishing the crime of manufacturing and selling counterfeit and shoddy goods in accordance with the law issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate.
More than 10 people in the criminal gang of production, supply and marketing were excavated
In September 2022, the Shanghai public security authorities received a report from a buyer that he had adverse reactions such as dizziness and palpitation after taking aphrodisiac food purchased from an adult health product store in Shanghai through WeChat, and provided a self-test report. The public security organs immediately opened a case for investigation and seized some of the food involved in the case in the health care product store. After testing, the food involved in the case contained sildenafil, a prohibited ingredient.
Seized items involved in the case.
In October 2022, the Shanghai Railway Inspection Institute intervened in the case in advance in accordance with the law, guiding the investigation agency to trace the source and dig deep into the clues. After investigation, the public security organs coordinated the police force on February 8, 2023, and at the same time carried out joint arrest operations in Qinghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Beijing, Shandong, Hunan and other places, seizing some food, raw material powder, production tools and packaging materials involved in the case.
In view of the problems of scattered dens and personnel involved in the case, and the variety of products involved in the case, the Shanghai Railway Inspection Institute urged the investigation authorities to collect and fix relevant evidence in a timely manner, and clarify the direction of the next investigation. In the end, with the first downstream dealer as a clue, a total of 1 raw material supplier, 7 producers, and 8 dealers were traced. At the same time, urge the public security organs to simultaneously transfer the evidence materials involved in the case to the public security organs in Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei and other places, so as to realize the full coverage of the public security organs in the above-mentioned areas to crack down on downstream dealers.
From May to September 2023, the public security organs successively transferred the case of Wu, Zhang, Jia, Cao and others who produced and sold toxic and harmful food, and Xu's illegal business case to the Shanghai Railway Inspection Institute for review and prosecution.
The call recording makes the defense self-defeating
The prosecutor handling the case found that in October 2022, after being introduced by Zhang and Jia, Wang, the director of a company in Qinghai, decided to accept Wu's entrustment to produce a certain aphrodisiac food for him. From February 2022 to February 2023, due to the poor feedback effect after the launch of the previous products, in order to improve the effect of the product, Wu successively entrusted Zhang to purchase or personally purchase more than 60 kilograms of sildenafil and anti-detection nafil raw materials from the raw material buyer Xu for the follow-up rework and production of food. Zhang, Jia, Wang and others knew that the above-mentioned non-phenol ingredients were prohibited from being added to food and had toxic side effects on the human body, but still mixed the non-natural raw materials purchased by Wu with corn starch, red ginseng and other excipients to produce aphrodisiac foods containing the above-mentioned illegal added ingredients in Zhejiang and Qinghai dens, and sold the above-mentioned foods to many places across the country jointly or separately through online platforms by Cao and others from the Shandong sales team.
In March 2023, prosecutors from the Shanghai Railway Inspection Institute were counting the items involved in the case.
In March 2023, the prosecutor of the Shanghai Railway Inspection Institute and the public security police inspected the items involved in the case.
"The seized products and raw material powders were tested to contain sildenafil, and the relevant products were all produced by Zhang and others and a company in Qinghai, so can it be determined that the products they produced and sold in the past were all toxic and harmful foods?" The prosecutor handling the case felt that this fact had to be clarified. By carefully combing the production forms and logistics documents recorded on the computers of the Qinghai production dens, comparing them with the WeChat chat records and bank statements of the suspects' procurement of non-material raw materials and the entrusted production, and comparing them one by one, the prosecutor accurately drew and restored the criminal facts of the production of toxic and harmful food in the two dens in Qinghai and Zhejiang.
However, Zhang put forward the defense that some foods in Zhejiang dens were not added because the quantity of non-raw materials was not enough, and Wu also insisted that the packaging materials of Qinghai dens were not enough, and suspected that some products in the early stage did not add non-raw materials. Is the abrupt argument of the two true? The prosecutor handling the case thought that Zhang had mentioned that he would record the call with Wu, so would they talk about it in the call recording? The prosecutor handling the case immediately retrieved Zhang's mobile phone phone recordings.
"Angkor, last time I remember you telling me that the addition amount was 0.07?"
“0.1，1g里面放着0.1g，10%。 ”
"But I remember it was 0.07."
"You can put this batch in at 0.1 now."
In the face of the recording evidence, Zhang's defense was self-defeating. Wu's defense that the previous food was not reworked and added with non-raw materials due to insufficient packaging materials was denied by the prosecutor by combing through the chat records. The evidence in the case is sufficient to prove that the food they produced and sold in the past was all toxic and harmful food containing non-raw materials.
The addition of anti-detection of anafil derivatives is compliant
Wu and others said that after receiving customer complaints, they purchased anti-detection raw materials instead of sildenafil for food additives, which did not belong to the 90 items of nafil and lafi that testing institutions could detect, and were legal ingredients.
Can 90 derivatives other than nafil and lafi really be added? Is it true that Wu and others have no illegal cognition and subjective intent? With these questions, prosecutors look for evidence from legal documents and from massive chat logs.
According to the Opinions on Cracking Down on the Illegal Addition of Narfilafil Substances and Their Series of Derivatives in Food issued by the State Administration for Market Regulation and the judicial interpretations issued by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Court, sildenafil and Narfil derivatives should be recognized as "toxic and harmful non-food raw materials".
The prosecutor found through combing the chat records that Wu, the producer, and the employees of the sales team all knew that the food involved in the case was constantly complained about due to illegal addition, and then Wu informed Jia of the Qinghai factory and Zhang of the Zhejiang den, saying that he had made new exemption materials, although Jia and Zhang both thought that "adding this can still be found out, and there is a risk", but at Wu's insistence, they still added production. In the opinion of the prosecutor, this evidence is sufficient to prove the subjective intent of the person involved.
How to explain the undetected non-substance test report sent by Wu to the subordinate agent? After careful investigation and interrogation, the case-handling team found that most of them were fake test reports made by Wu in order to promote product sales and no physical inspection.
After clarifying the facts of the crime, the determination of the crime, the distinction between the principal and accessory offenders, and the calculation of the amount of the crime have become another difficult problem facing the procurator handling the case.
Case-handling procurators are to consider the identities, roles, and profits of participants at each level, to distinguish the degree of participation of co-offenders, accurately determine the principal and accessory offenders and the amount of the crime, and ensure that the punishment is commensurate with the crime. After analysis and combing, the prosecutor handling the case believes that Wu planned the entire criminal facts, purchased non-material raw materials, and organized multiple criminal dens for production and sales, played a major role in the joint crime, and was the principal offender, suspected of the crime of producing and selling toxic and harmful food, and should be determined to be the amount of more than 130 yuan in the sales of the product; Mr. Jia, a company in Qinghai and its main employees, and Mr. Zhang and others from Zhejiang Den constituted a joint crime with Mr. Wu, and were suspected of the crime of producing and selling toxic and harmful food; The sales team and Wu constituted accomplices to the crime of selling toxic and harmful food.
In August 2023, the prosecutor of the Shanghai Railway Inspection Institute discussed the case.
From June to December 2023, the Shanghai Railway Inspection Institute successively prosecuted 15 people including a company in Qinghai and Wu on suspicion of producing and selling toxic and harmful food, and Xu on suspicion of illegal business operations. After trial, the court successively sentenced the defendant unit to a company in Qinghai to a fine of 500,000 yuan for the crime of producing and selling toxic and harmful food, and sentenced the defendants Wu, Cao, and Xu to 16 people in prison for 10 years, six months to eight months, respectively, for the crime of producing and selling toxic and harmful food, and for the crime of selling toxic and harmful food, and sentenced some of the defendants to a suspended sentence and a fine of 2 million yuan to 3,000 yuan each. After the first-instance judgment, Wu appealed. On April 12, 2024, the second-instance ruling rejected the appeal and upheld the original judgment.
Litigation source governance promotes the healthy development of e-commerce
In order to avoid the further expansion of harmful consequences, the Shanghai Railway Inspection Institute gave full play to its legal supervision duties, promoted close cooperation between judicial and administrative organs in many places, promptly transferred criminal clues, traced downstream dealers, and promoted public security organs and market supervision and management departments to increase cooperation in different places, recalled toxic and harmful foods sold to Qinghai, Anhui and other places, and promptly destroyed more than 1,000 boxes of food seized in the case.
In this case, the food involved in the case flowed to multiple e-commerce platforms through downstream distributors and was sold to all parts of the country, with a large scope of influence and wide radiation. In response to the negligence of food and drug safety supervision of e-commerce platforms exposed by the case, the court insisted on paying equal attention to punishment and governance, and successively carried out special comprehensive management of the two major domestic e-commerce platforms involved in the case, from case handling to similar case management.
While comprehensively combing the food and drug cases involving online e-commerce platforms handled in the past three years, the court carefully listened to the opinions of the platforms through on-site visits and research, held seminars, and issued procuratorial suggestions to the two major e-commerce platforms involved in the case in response to the problems found.
In order to promote the governance and rectification of online e-commerce platforms, the court has also strengthened tracking and implementation. Up to now, the two major e-commerce platforms involved in the case have removed more than 30 kinds of unsafe food from the shelves, closed down more than 100 illegal stores, added risk sub-labels to more than 80 illegal store operators, comprehensively upgraded the prevention and control model of the online platform, and coordinated to protect the safety of online food and drugs.
Uncover the true face of the "skinny beauty".
Emeishan, Sichuan: Investigate and deal with it together
Cross-provincial production and sales of "three nos" weight loss drugs
In April 2024, prosecutors from the Emeishan City Procuratorate in Sichuan Province introduced the dangers of "three nos" diet pills to consumers in supermarkets.
From April 15 to 19, the Emeishan City Procuratorate in Sichuan Province organized cadres and police officers to go into large shopping malls and supermarkets to carry out a week-long rule of law publicity campaign to educate and guide citizens on how to avoid common online shopping traps. At the lecture site, prosecutor Zhang Youjun told the public about a case they had just completed in which a "three-no" weight loss product turned into a hot-selling diet drug on the Internet.
Consumers panic and palpitate after eating "Skinny Beauty".
Li spent more than 18,000 yuan on WeChat to buy 20 bottles of "Skinny Beauty" weight loss capsules, but he didn't expect to have symptoms such as palpitations and palpitations after just a few days of eating. On April 7, 2023, Li reported the situation to the Food and Drug Ring Brigade of the Emeishan Public Security Bureau. After investigation, the weight loss pill taken by Li contained sibutramine. According to the WeChat purchase records provided by Li, the public security organs quickly locked up the criminal suspect Wu. After Wu arrived at the case, his predecessor Li also voluntarily surrendered.
After she received the buyer's WeChat transfer, she sent the buyer's phone number and delivery address to Li, and Li delivered the goods directly. For every bottle of 'Skinny Beauty' sold, Wu can earn a price difference of 500 yuan to 600 yuan. Zhang Youjun said, "Li is a senior distributor, she bought weight loss capsules from her family, printed the outer packaging and instructions of weight loss capsules through the online shopping platform, and repackaged the weight loss capsules according to customer needs, and named the capsules after packaging 'Thin Beauty'." ”
On April 28, 2023, the Emeishan Municipal Procuratorate received an invitation from the Municipal Public Security Bureau to discuss the case. The Emeishan City Procuratorate set up a special case team headed by Procurator General Zheng Gang to intervene in advance to guide the public security organs to investigate and collect evidence, and finally dug out a three-level online sales of "three nos" diet pills chain composed of the producer Zhao, the intermediate distributor Li and the terminal retailer Wu.
Guide the investigation and evidence collection to find out the producer
"The complex sales network of slimming capsules involved in this case, the fact that the suspects do not know each other and frequently change WeChat has brought great challenges to the investigation." Zheng Gang said. On May 9, 2023, the task force and the public security organs held a case discussion and analysis meeting, clarifying the direction of evidence collection in series sales network with logistics details. Through comparative analysis, Li's predecessor Zhao was locked.
On May 24, 2023, at the door of a courier company in a town in Wugang City, Henan Province, the public security organs arrested Zhao who was mailing weight loss capsules on the spot, and at the same time blocked 20,000 weight loss capsules. The public security organs seized 7 capsule filling machines, tablet candy machines, crushers, air compressors, 0.66 kilograms of white powder, more than 200 kilograms of corn starch, maltodextrin, fruity fragrance powder and other auxiliary materials, more than 489,000 empty capsules of various colors, and more than 61,000 finished weight loss capsules and weight loss tablet candy in Zhao's rental room.
After testing the capsules, tablet candies and raw materials seized by Zhao, sibutramine was detected. After investigation, from February 2023 to being caught, Zhao successively used a false name and phone number to deliver goods to buyers in 30 provinces and cities, and sent a total of more than 750 express orders.
Returned for supplementary investigation to consolidate case evidence
On August 18, 2023, the case of criminal suspects Zhao, Li, and Wu producing and selling toxic and harmful food was transferred to the Emeishan City Procuratorate for review and prosecution.
When the prosecutor handling the case listened to Li's defense lawyer's opinions, the lawyer pointed out that Li did not know that the weight loss capsules contained sibutramine, and did not sell them knowing that the weight loss capsules were toxic and harmful. In order to ensure the accuracy of the conviction, the procuratorate returned the case to the public security organs for supplementary investigation, and guided the investigators to strengthen the evidence around whether the suspect subjectively knew that the weight loss products contained toxic and harmful ingredients, and whether he had obtained relevant qualifications for the production and sale of food (drugs).
Through the analysis of the supplementary materials, the prosecutor handling the case believes that Wu has informed Li that there are buyers who have adverse reactions after consuming weight loss capsules, and suspects that the weight loss capsules may contain sibutramine, which is sufficient to determine that Li has subjective knowledge of selling toxic and harmful products.
In November 2023, the Emeishan City Procuratorate of Sichuan Province, together with the public security organs, reviewed the physical evidence.
On November 15, 2023, the court indicted Zhao and Li. Considering that the circumstances of Wu's crime were minor, he had no criminal record, and he voluntarily pleaded guilty and accepted punishment and actively returned the stolen goods, the court made a decision not to prosecute Wu in accordance with law. On February 5, 2024, the court adopted the prosecution's accusation opinion after trial, and sentenced the defendant Zhao to three years in prison and a fine of 200,000 yuan for the crime of producing and selling toxic and harmful food; Defendant Li was sentenced to one year imprisonment, suspended for two years, and fined 90,000 yuan for the crime of selling toxic and harmful food; Zhao must not engage in food production and operation management within five years from the date of completion of the criminal punishment, and Li X shall not engage in food production and operation management during the probation period, nor shall he serve as food safety management personnel of food production and operation enterprises.
For the person who was not prosecuted, Wu, the court found that it was necessary to give him the necessary administrative punishment. Because Wu's place of household registration and the place of the crime were both in Qionglai City, the procuratorate transferred the case to the Qionglai City Procuratorate for assistance. On January 30, 2024, the Qionglai Municipal Administration for Market Regulation imposed an administrative penalty of a fine of 38,300 yuan on Wu in accordance with the law.
Source: Procuratorate Daily, Der Spiegel