Just now, the amendment to the Criminal Law was voted through! Those who bribe with drugs and equipment will be severely punished!

On December 29, the seventh session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress voted to adopt the 12th amendment to the Criminal Law, which will come into force on March 1, 2024.

The biggest change in this Amendment (XII) to the Criminal Law is to increase the penalty for active bribery, turning the previous focus on the punishment of passive bribery into active and passive bribery together:

1. Active bribery offences: increased penalties compared to passive bribery offences. Multiple bribes or bribes to more than one person; bribery by State officials; bribery in key State projects or major projects; bribery for the purpose of seeking promotion or adjustment of position or rank; bribery of staff members of supervision, administrative law enforcement or the judiciary; bribery in the areas of ecological environment, financial and monetary affairs, safety production, food and drugs, disaster prevention and relief, social security, education, medical care, etc., and the implementation of unlawful and criminal activities; and using the proceeds of the offence for the purpose of giving bribes.
2. Unitary passive bribery: increasing the original penalty. Previously, the CCDI had also issued an article defining the characteristics of unit bribery, which stressed the need to accurately distinguish between the offence of unit bribery and the offence of individual bribery.

Requirement in the determination of both:

It is not enough to identify the facts of power and money transactions; comprehensive judgements must be made in conjunction with the nature of the unit, the organizational and management mechanisms, the source of the funds used to pay the bribe, and the attribution of the proceeds of crime.For a long time, some bribe-givers have paid bribes in the name of the unit, leading to unbalanced handling of cases and insufficient punishment; on the other hand, some enterprises have avoided punishment by shirking responsibilities and dumping pots on individuals, leading to the repeated prohibition of bribe-giving and bribe-taking……. And after a precise differentiation between the two, it will undoubtedly be effective in patching up the loopholes of the rules, and tracing back to the management of the said chaos.

Secondly, the sentencing of active bribery offences has been significantly adjusted.

Amendment (XII) to the Criminal Law amended the penalty for the offence of active bribery of a unit from one penalty of up to five years’ imprisonment to two penalties, and the sentence was further extended.

The two levels of penalties are specified:

Imprisonment of up to three years or detention and a fine;
A term of imprisonment of not less than three years and not more than ten years and a fine.

These two key adjustments in the differentiation and determination of the offence of active bribery and the quantitative sentencing of the offence will directly improve the precision and effectiveness of the fight against active bribery!

It is worth noting that under the comprehensive upgrading of punishment, the official has targeted the “first shot” of rectification at the pharmaceutical industry, including the pharmaceutical industry, equipment enterprises, and pharmaceutical agents!

At the same time, since the beginning of last year, the Commission for Discipline Inspection has stressed in the second plenary session of the twentieth session of the Commission for Discipline Inspection and in the article “Continuously Exploring and Improving the Bribe Giver “Blacklist” System” that it will insist on investigating both bribe-taking and bribe-paying together, and will increase the strength of the penalties for the behaviors of bribery; and it will set up a bribery “blacklist” system with the function of joint punishment, so that there can be multiple limitations on the qualification of the bribery perpetrators’ behaviours and their capacity to perform the tasks.

Source：Medical Device Distributors Alliance

Translated & edited： Bradyknow