Is it fair that agreeing to mine still constitutes the crime of illegal mining?
Yang is a quarry operator whose mining rights expired on May 17, 2018, and he himself knows that they have expired. However, he still paid the contract fee to the township ** according to the amount of previous years, and the township ** collected the money and agreed to him to continue mining. But in October 2019, the police detained Yang for illegal mining, and the court finally sentenced him to one year and six months.
*If they all agree to continue mining, does it still constitute illegal mining?
The logic of the court's conviction is that you still carry out mining knowing that the mining license has expired, and the township only collects a contract fee, which is not a legal procedure stipulated in the Mineral Resources Law, so this is unlicensed mining.
But I think that the court is wrong, the crime of illegal mining is an administrative offense, Yang paid the contract fee and got the permission of **, which is based on the trust of **, which is enough to produce an understanding of the legalization of his own mining behavior, which is a misunderstanding, and subjectively does not have the intention of illegal mining.
Even if Yang's behavior constitutes an illegal act, he only needs to be given an administrative penalty of ordering him to stop mining and confiscating his illegal gains, and should not be investigated for criminal responsibility for the crime of illegal mining.
In the final analysis, it is ** that allows me to mine, and the state cannot convict me of a crime for this kind of behavior.