Recently, the People's Procuratorate of Gezhouba, Yichang City, Hubei Province, handled a major illegal mining case involving more than 430 million yuan, with a maximum sentence of five years and six months. In April
2017, Gong Moumou, the legal representative of Hongsheng Port Co., Ltd. in Zhijiang City, Hubei Province, undertook the dredging project of the dry rain wharf in Zhijiang City at a price of 200,000 yuan from the dry rain port company, with a sand mining volume of 100,000 tons. Later, Gong signed a dredging construction agreement with the owner of four engineering ships, such as "Panlong 668", and paid the sand mining fee at the price of 5 yuan per ton. From May to July of
the same year, knowing that he had not obtained the "River Sand Mining Permit", Gong called the four engineering vessels mentioned above and the "Zhijiang Hongsheng No.1" engineering vessel under his own name to operate in the waters of Liutiaozhou Hetaozi, the main stream of the Yangtze River, beyond the scope of dredging. Gong Mou-mou arranged Jin Mou-mou and Yu Mou-mou to take charge of the scene. During the
construction period, Yumou and Jinmou directed five engineering ships to dig sand and gravel beyond the prescribed scope. Gong and others sold the sand and gravel to buyers in Jiangsu, Hubei and other places. The money was collected through other people's accounts and transferred to Gong's account one after another. The total amount was as high as 430 million yuan. Under the cover of legal dredging projects,
the case illegally excavated sand and gravel beyond the scope of dredging, involving a long time span, a wide range of personnel and a large amount of money, which seriously infringed on the national management system of mineral resources, greatly damaged the ecological environment of the Yangtze River, and had a very bad social impact.
Breaking the deadlock
of "zero confession" and "zero return of stolen goods", Gong and others refused to admit the fact of illegal mining and external sales after being summoned to the case by the public security organs. Faced with many difficulties, the Gezhouba Procuratorate took the initiative to intervene in advance, conducted in-depth field investigations on the scene of the case, held several case analysis seminars with the public security organs, clarified the nature of the case, comprehensively studied and judged the factors such as subjective knowledge, status and role, and identified three criminal suspect, such as Gong Mou-mou. It also puts forward more than ten opinions on investigation and evidence collection from the aspects of division of responsibilities, flow of sales funds, assets and so on, so as to guide the public security organs to investigate and collect evidence.
Because there is no account for sand and gravel sales, how to find out the sales amount has become a difficult problem. "Since the criminal suspect can not be found here, can it be checked from the buyer?" The procurator and investigators changed their thinking, put forward the direction of collecting evidence from the downstream buyers to determine the amount of stolen goods, and collected the evidence materials of 45 buyers in Jiangsu, Hubei and other places to purchase sand and gravel, forming a tight chain of evidence.
As a number of enterprises in Gong were in a state of loss at the time of the incident, the public security organs only seized one engineering ship. In order to recover the stolen goods to the greatest extent, the procurator repeatedly preached the lenient legal policy of confession and punishment to the three criminal suspect, and urged the criminal suspect to give up their fluke mentality, confess truthfully and actively return the stolen goods in order to win leniency. After unremitting efforts, the attitude of the criminal suspect has been loosened, Gong Mou voluntarily returned 12 million yuan of stolen goods, and Yu Mou voluntarily pleaded guilty to punishment.
After the Gezhouba Procuratorate filed a public prosecution, the court sentenced Gong, Jin and Yu to five years and six months, five years and three years in prison for illegal mining, and fined them three million yuan, 150,000 yuan and 100,000 yuan respectively. After the sentence was pronounced, the three defendant appealed. In April 2023, the second instance upheld the verdict of Gong Mou-mou and Jin Mou-mou, and sentenced Yu Mou-mou to three years'imprisonment and a fine of 70,000 yuan for his meritorious performance.
"Gong Mou-mou and others have been unscrupulously stealing sand and gravel from the Yangtze River for a long time. Have the relevant functional departments neglected to perform their duties and damaged public welfare?" The procurator is aware of this and transfers the case clues to the public interest litigation department in time. The public interest litigation case handling team quickly intervened and immediately started the investigation in view of the damage to the Yangtze River and the negligence of the functional units in performing their duties.
During this period, the public interest litigation case handling group held several seminars on the limitation of administrative litigation, cross-regional jurisdiction and other issues, "Can we apply to the higher court for designated jurisdiction in order to handle criminal cases together?" After reaching a consensus, the public interest litigation case handling team then asked the Yichang People's Procuratorate for instructions. According to the designated jurisdiction of Yichang People's Procuratorate, the case was handled by Gezhouba Procuratorate. On August 15,
2022, the Gezhouba Procuratorate issued a procuratorial proposal to the Municipal Water Conservancy and Lake Bureau to urge the Bureau to perform its duties in accordance with the law. On September 19 of the same year, the Municipal Water Conservancy and Lake Bureau made a written reply. However, as of the expiration of the rectification period, the Bureau has not yet filed a case against the relevant administrative violations in the case of illegal mining by Gong and others. The Gezhouba Procuratorate then filed an administrative public interest lawsuit, requesting the court to confirm that the Water Conservancy and Lake Bureau of a city had not fully performed its duties and violated the law, and ordered it to fully perform its management duties. On March 17, 2023, the court supported all the litigation requests of Gezhouba Procuratorate in the first instance.
However, has the seriously damaged ecological environment of the Yangtze River been restored? With this problem in mind, the public interest litigation case handling team promptly reported the clues of civil public interest litigation to the Yichang People's Procuratorate, which urged relevant departments to carry out ecological environment damage assessment, recover the cost of ecological damage caused by illegal sand mining, and restore the damaged ecological environment of the Yangtze River. At present, civil public interest litigation cases are being processed.
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