I heard that there is a supermartet makes millions profits by fines? Shocked!
On August 8th , according to the insider, a RT-Mart in Jiangsu Province, had its own "trick" for thieves: When their stuffs discovers the thieves, they will let them go deliberately but catch them back to the ‘auditing room’ at the moment they went out. Then they will find out the thieves’ ability to pay, determine the amount of compensation and threat them by informing their schools, families ask them to sign a "settlement agreement" to compensate for 10-20 times the price.
To this wave of operation of RT-Mart, I can only say 1 word: Amazing!
A large superMartet chain, suddenly turned into a bully in stead of a good seller? Did the man in the auditing room have to say ‘I open the superMartet, I sell the good, if you want to pass, leave your money here?’ From the bills of the insider put on the internet we can see that a man was once fined 9,000 yuan by Darunfa for stealing five pieces of clothing, the amount is so high which make us feel RT-Mart is a "robber" who selfishly makes profits.
A thousand readers make a thousand hamlets. While I disapproved of it, there were also a large wave of netizens who supported it for they thought the thieves deserved to be fined and it is threefold that RT-Mart not only punished the thieves, but also recovered their losses, even more they showed great compassion to the thieves and saved them from prison.
Is RT-Mart's behavior merciful or vicious? Let's see how the law judge.
Civil law: this ‘reconciliation agreement’, I don’t think it is OK.
What?! The thieves had signed the ‘reconciliation agreement’ voluntarily already, is there any room for reversal? Of course. Ask yourself, are these thieves really willing to pay these high compensation? No, they signed the ‘reconciliation agreement’ only on the basis of the fear of RT-Mart's ‘notifying school, family members, units and police’. According to article 64 of the Supreme People's Court's opinion on several issues concerning the implementation of the ‘general principles of the people's Republic of China’, ‘if a citizen, whose relatives or friends are threatened with loss of life, health, honor, reputation or property, is forced to express his or her intention against the truth, the act can be regarded as coercion.’ RT-Mart's behavior is undoubtedly a coercive act threatening citizens by their reputation. This is a simple thing that in the previous articles, we had popularized the knowledge of the right of revocation of civil law to you. Rt-mart forced the other party to enter into a contract against its true intention by means of coercion and as a result the injured thieves should have the right to revoke the ‘reconciliation agreement’.
Administrative Punishment Law: Let me see who is fining secretly behind my back.
Fine is the types of administrative penalty expressly stipulated in the Administrative Punishment Law. On the one hand, only a limited number of subjects stipulated by laws, administrative regulations and local regulations, etc. have the right to stipulate the penalty. Even the government of Jiangsu province can only has the right to specify penalties and impose strict limits on the amount of penalties. How dare a superMartet in a district of Jiangsu Province stipulate that ‘one penalty for stealing is 20’? On the other hand, not everyone have the right to fine others. The Administrative Punishment Law stipulates that only organs or organizations with the power of administrative punishment have the right to fine, such as our public security organs and business departments. Rt-Mart, such a lacking-authorisation entity who dares to regulate and punish both, what makes me just want to say: dude, you are really courageous.
Criminal law: the law has long arms.
According to the Beijing News, RT-Mart has been registered by local police. It is estimated that RT-Mart may be questioned at this moment: thieves steal my things and it is merciful for me to help them away from imprisonment, why I am Under police investigation now? Simply, thieves break the law and commit crimes, you can catch thieves and deal with them by the police but how can you break law and commit crimes yourself? As a porter of the criminal law, I think RT-Mart's actions may touch on the following charges.
The crime of illegal detention refers to the crime of illegally detaining others or illegally depriving others of personal freedom by other means. According to the new ‘Opinions on Several Questions Concerning the Handling of Criminal Cases of Soft Violence’promulgated on April 9th this year, people who illegally detain others for more than three times and each time lasting for more than four hours, or illegally detain others for more than 12 hours in total, should be convicted of the crime of illegal detention and punished. According to online information, RT-Mart has repeatedly detained the victims in the ‘audit room’ and refused to release them until they received the money which I think RT-Mart has committed the crime of illegal detention because of repeatedly depriving others of their freedom.
The crime of extortion refers to the act of illegally occupying public or private property of the victim by means of intimidation, threat or blackmail for the purpose of illegal possession. In order to gain illegal benefits, RT-Mart threatened and intimidated the victim with reputation and personal freedom, so that the victim felt fear and be forced to deliver money on the spot. According to the available information, RT-Mart has repeatedly carried out extortion against thieves, which may constitute a crime of extortion.
It's not over yet, both crimes have their own good brothers, kidnapping and robbery. What’s that mean? These two crimes are easy to convert. At present, in this case there have been no reports of kidnapping and robbery, but it is not excluded that the police will find new criminal facts in the investigation.
Let's start with the kidnapping, the brother of the crime of illegal detention. This crime is manifested in the act of kidnapping others for extortion of property or taking others as hostages. Please note that the object of extortion here is the family members of the kidnapped person. Now it is known that RT-Mart extorted money from the victims through illegal detention, however, what if the victims have no money? Of course to find someone to help them! At this moment, as long as RT-Mart calls the relatives and friends of the victims and says ‘get money to redeem him or her’, congratulations to RT-Mart, you are likely to succeed in committing a new crime -- kidnapping.
As for robbery, it and extortion are both acts of coercing others and illegally occupying other people's property for the purpose of illegal possession. One of the differences is that their violated personal rights are different that robbery is a threat to the life and health rights of the victims. As mentioned above, RT-Mart committed the latter crime by threatening the victim's right of reputation and personal freedom but once the police found that RT-Mart’s stuffs had used a weapon or violence to intimidate victims during the investigation, then RT-Mart's crime of extortion would change to robbery.
Thieves are hateful, but only the law has the power to judge and punish crimes. Any acts that attemp to play god or attempt to lynch people, just like RT-Mart in this case, are just illegal acts as imparity clauses in the name of justice. Today, with the full coverage of the special national campaign to crush the gang crime down, we should respond positively to the call of the state, resolutely reprimand acts as imparity clauses, resolutely contain ‘soft violence’, thoroughly eradicate the breeding ground for black and evil forces and build a safe, harmonious and happy society together!
