Deputy Procurator-General of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) Sun Qian on Thursday said efforts will be intensified to crack down on fake goods production and sales, as well as intellectual property rights infringements.

When delivering a speech at a press conference, Sun said a couple of recent serious counterfeit goods production cases, including the fake milk powder cases in eastern China's Anhui Province, which left 13 infants dead and another 171 hospitalized, have been exposed by the press.

It demonstrated that the fake goods production criminals were still puffed up with arrogance in front of law, Sun said.

He pledged that the crackdown on conscienceless counterfeit food, medicine and agriculture-related goods production and selling will become one of the key jobs of the country's procuratorates at all levels in future.

He said there are three reasons for the current rampant fake goods production and selling as well as intellectual property rights infringements. One is that driven by profits, some administrative law enforcement departments failed to transfer criminal suspects to criminal judicial departments.

The second is that some local governments exerted local protectionism rampantly, meddling in the work of local administrative law enforcement departments. Some criminals were only given administrative punishment, instead of criminal penalty.

The third is that some officials supported fake goods production and intellectual property rights infringements behind the scenes. A few officials even joined those unlawful behaviors themselves, which has become the major barrier for eradicating fake goods production and intellectual property infringements.

In a bid to crack down on the rampant fake goods production and intellectual property infringements, Sun urged procuratorates at all levels to resolutely approve the arrest of criminal suspects in a timely manner, especially those principal criminal and hardened criminals.

Procuratorates at all levels should intensify efforts to supervise procedures of putting criminal suspects into criminal investigation, in a bid to avoid the phenomenon of replacing criminal penalty by administrative punishment, Sun said.

He also stressed that those officials who shield fake goods production and intellectual property infringement criminals from punishment would be given severe punishment.

Source: Xinhua