Illegal mining of sand and gravel on private hills exceeds 30000 tons, sentenced!

Mining minerals

on private hills must also apply for a mining license

in accordance with the law, otherwise it may constitute a criminal offence

. Recently, the court of Zhongxiang City, Hubei Province, made a judgment on the illegal mining case of Yang Mou and Zeng Mou, who were prosecuted by the procuratorate of Zhongxiang City. Yang Mou was sentenced to two years and three months'imprisonment, Zeng Mou was sentenced to one year's imprisonment and a fine.

In 2017, in order to build a chicken farm, Zeng asked people to dig part of his mountain on the private hill in Zhongxiang Phosphate Mine Town, and the rock sand has been piled up on the hill. Two years later, Zeng saw others digging rock sand in the mountains and selling it for profit, thinking that he could use the previously excavated rock sand to subsidize his family. Therefore, Zeng Mou found Yang Mou and sold the rock sand piled up in the private hill to Yang Mou. When Yang Mou was hauling the rock sand purchased, he secretly started the idea of digging the rock sand on a certain mountain and selling it for profit. Ceng Mou-mou found that Yang Mou stole rock sand on the private mountain, so he consulted Yang Mou many times about the cost of digging ore sand. Finally, Yang agreed to pay the cost of rock sand to Zeng at the price of 200 yuan per vehicle. Since

2019, Yang has hired excavators to mine more than 30,000 tons of granite for building stones on the mountain of Zeng, with a mineral value of more than 700,000 yuan. In the process of mining, Yang often chooses to mine in the middle of the night and on holidays, and arranges sentry guards to patrol intersections in order to evade law enforcement supervision and crackdown. The prosecutor believed that the acts of Yang and Zeng violated the provisions of the Mineral Resources Law, and that the circumstances were particularly serious. Their acts violated the provisions of Article 343 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China and constituted the crime of illegal mining. They decided to prosecute according to law. Ownership of

mineral resources shall be owned by the state. State ownership of mineral resources, either near the earth's surface or underground, shall not change with the ownership or right to the use of the land which the mineral resources are attached to. Anyone who wishes to mine mineral resources must make an application according to law, obtain the mining right and register. Even if mineral resources on private hills are exploited, mining licenses should be applied for according to law. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in his speech at the National Conference on Eco-environmental Protection: "Protect the ecological environment with the strictest system and the strictest rule of law." The broad masses of the people should consciously enhance their awareness of the rule of law in the protection of environmental resources, know and abide by the law, and build a beautiful home with blue sky, green land and clear water.