Lazada to be inspected for selling guns and components

Lazada will be inspected for selling dangerous toy guns and components

According to the National Steering Committee Against Smuggling, Trade Fraud and Counterfeit Goods (National Steering Committee 389), the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has directed departments and agencies to clarify and handle the case of Lazada selling prohibited goods on its e-commerce platform, including plastic guns with bullets made of plaster or metal and 1:1 replicas of M4A1 rifles.

The city People’s Committee asked the Department of Industry and Trade, the Agency of Market Management, and the Customs Department to review the issue quickly and promptly prevent bad people from using these devices for crime or violate legal provisions.

Zing.vn cited the document that these agencies will have to report to the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee before February 28.

Earlier, the Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy under the Ministry of Industry and Trade ordered users, organisations, and e-commerce platforms to check, review, and remove all items related to guns and components and other rudimentary weapons, as well as strengthen technical measures or filters to alert and ignore all prohibited items and violations from these websites.

In fact, e-commerce platforms do not allow users to sell prohibited items and do keep a team to moderate content and add keywords to a “black list.” However, these items did not use the word “gun” in their names and descriptions, so they were allowed to be displayed on Lazada.vn and Shopee.vn for several days.

According to lawyer Nguyen Thanh Ha, chairman of SBLAW, in case Lazada does not have measures to handle and prevent violations like this, the company will be open to penalties in line with the legal provisions on e-commerce operation.

Article 83 of Decree No.185/2013/ND-CP on penalties on administrative violations in commercial activities, the production of and trading in counterfeit or banned goods stipulates a fine of VND30-40 million ($1,300-1,740) for the failure of applying handling measures when detecting or receiving reports on trading acts which violate legal provisions on the websites providing e-commerce services.