How to convict and punish the crime of environmental pollution?

5 January 2017

The Supreme People's court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate in Beijing issued "on the

handling of several legal issues applicable to the interpretation of criminal cases of environmental

pollution” on Dec 26, 2016. Since the 1997 implementation of the criminal law, the supreme

judicial office has issued a special judicial interpretation on China environmental pollution crime

for the 3rd time.

How to punish the crime of polluting the environment and the illegal discharge under heavy

pollution weather warning period? How to deal with the environmental protection supervision

personnel dereliction of duty and environmental monitoring data tampering?

Crime of polluting the environment: how to conviction and sentencing?

The crime of polluting the environment is the basic crime of environmental pollution crime, the

prerequisite is "serious pollution of the environment" So, what behavior is a serious pollution of

the environment?

The Supreme People's court research director Yan Maokun said 2013 interpretations provide

fourteen specific cases of “serious pollution of the environment”, the interpretations released

today contained Article 1 and have made improvements according to the judicial practice.

What concerned is that the judicial interpretation of the heavy metal pollution of the

environment into the crime criteria.

Yan Maokun said, in view of heavy metals showed obvious differences in the degree of toxicity,

the comprehensive consideration of environmental science and environment medical perspective,

interpretation clearly indicated that, discharge, dumping, disposal of lead, mercury, cadmium,

chromium, arsenic, thallium, antimony, more than three times pollutant emission standards, or

discharge, dumping, nickel, zinc, copper containing disposal, silver, vanadium, manganese, cobalt

pollutants exceed the national or local pollutant emission standards more than ten times, should

be recognized as serious pollution of the environment.

What will be facing that heavy pollution during the early warning illegal emissions?

At the conference Q&A session, talking about air pollution, Yan Maokun said that the implementation

of air pollution crime evidence is very difficult, because the source of pollution emissions into the air

after high mobility, and soon be diluted, so it is difficult to fight against crime. Therefore, the

interpretation set a better operation of the standard of conviction and sentencing.

For example, new standards are added, which will be used to tamper with key sewage units, to forge

automatic monitoring data, to interfere with automatic monitoring facilities, to discharge pollutants,

as a serious environmental pollution.

"That is to say, in this case, no matter how much you discharge, actually this is hard to find, but as

long as there are data tampering, forgery, the interference of automatic monitoring facilities, on the

presumption in law as" serious environmental pollution "can constitute the crime of polluting the

environment"

Yan Maokun pointed out that the units and individuals in the implementation of environmental

pollution crime is to seek illegal interests, adding more than two provisions, let person the loss

outweighs the gain, can be more targeted, punishing and preventing crime.

It is worth mentioning that, the interpretation clearly the implementation of environmental pollution

crime, should be severely punished under specific circumstances.

Including, "during the heavy pollution weather warning, during the disposal of environmental

emergencies or ordered rectification period, in violation of state regulations, discharge, dumping,

disposal of radioactive waste, waste containing the pathogens of infectious diseases, toxic

substances or other harmful substances"

How to deal with environmental regulators dereliction of duty?

According to the criminal law of 408th, staff of state organs responsible for environmental protection

supervision and management of serious irresponsibility, causes a serious environmental pollution

accident, serious consequences resulting in serious losses or personal casualties of public or private

property, three years of fixed-term imprisonment or criminal detention.

The press conference, deputy director of the Policy Research Office of the Supreme People's

Procuratorate legal lines Xian Jie also said that the Supreme People's Procuratorate has always

attached great importance to the ecological environment in the field of punishing crime, through

the deployment to carry out special work, published typical cases, to play the procuratorial functions,

increase the subordinate procuratorate guidance, the timely intervention of major environmental

pollution accident especially deep behind the destruction of environmental resources crimes clues,

investigating serious bribery, dereliction of duty crime.

How to deal with environmental monitoring data tampering?

The press conference, Ministry of environmental protection division of political director Bie Tao said

that the provisions of the judicial interpretation for tampering, forgery of environmental monitoring

data, behavior, supplement the criteria of conviction and sentencing specially, to solve the current

problems that the environmental protection department for monitoring data fraud penalties difficult,

soft, prominent problem of ineffective sanctions, will greatly enhance the legal deterrent force.

Specifically, the tenth interpretation clearly, in violation of state regulations, implement or modify

the parameters of the monitoring data, according to the environmental quality monitoring system

interference monitoring data sampling, resulting in serious distortion of behavior, or force, to incite

others to commit the following acts shall, in accordance with the provisions of article 286th of the

criminal law, the crime of destroying computer information system.

The interpretation is also clear, focused on sewage automatic monitoring facilities forgery tampering,

automatic monitoring data or interference, emissions cod, ammonia nitrogen, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen

oxides and other pollutants, and constituted the crime of polluting the environment and the crime of

destroying computer information system, in accordance with the provisions of punishment with a

heavier punishment.

People engaged in environmental monitoring facilities maintenance, operation personnel or to

participate in the implementation of tampering, forgery monitoring data, automatic monitoring

facilities of interference, acts of destruction of the environment quality monitoring system, should

be severely punished.

Violation of the provisions of the state, the computer information system storage, processing or

transmission of data and applications to delete, modify, increase the operation, the consequences

are serious, shall be punished in accordance with the provisions of the preceding paragraph.

What is a joint crime?

For such crimes, not only to punish the people directly pollute the environment, but also to fight the

source, behind the scenes, according to the investigation of criminal responsibility for hazardous

waste providers.

Reporters learned that the judicial interpretation will come into effect on January 1, 2017.