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Article 89 In the event of an accident involving special equipment, if any of the following circumstances exists, the unit shall be fined not less than 50,000 yuan but not more than 200,000 yuan; Impose a fine of not less than 10,000 yuan but not more than 50,000 yuan on the principal responsible person ; If the person in charge is a **staff member, disciplinary action shall be taken in accordance with the law: (1) Failing to organize rescue efforts immediately in the event of an accident involving special equipment, or leaving the post or absconding during the investigation and handling of such an accident ; (II) Those who delay reporting, give false reports, or conceal reports of accidents involving special equipment. Interpretation of the provision: This provision stipulates the legal liabilities that the entity where a special equipment accident occurs and its principal responsible person shall bear for any acts in violation of the provisions of this Law when such an accident takes place. I. The units where special equipment accidents occur and their principal responsible persons shall bear legal responsibility. Special equipment poses a significant risk to the personal safety and property of the public; in the event of an accident, it can endanger people’s lives and property. If rescue efforts are not organized promptly and effectively, the consequences of such accidents can worsen, leading to more severe casualties or property losses. After a special equipment accident occurs, it is of great significance to report the accident to the relevant authorities in a timely, accurate, and complete manner. This helps to organize rescue efforts promptly and effectively, reduce the losses caused by the accident, and facilitate the conduct of an investigation into it. Therefore, this Law stipulates that in the event of an accident involving special equipment, the unit where the accident occurred shall take measures in accordance with the emergency response plan, organize rescue efforts, prevent the accident from escalating, minimize casualties and property damage, preserve the accident scene and relevant evidence, and promptly report the incident to the local people’s government at or above the county level and to the departments responsible for the safety supervision and management of special equipment, as well as other relevant departments ; Units and individuals involved in the accident must not delay reporting, give false reports, or conceal information about the accident; they must also not hide or destroy relevant evidence or deliberately damage the accident scene. In practice, after special equipment accidents occur, some organizations and individuals, out of extreme neglect for the safety of people’s lives and property or fear of facing severe legal consequences, fail to organize rescue efforts in a timely manner or do so inadequately; they may even hinder the implementation of rescue measures. Furthermore, they might leave their posts during the accident investigation and handling process or even abscond. Some units and individuals fail to report accidents in a timely manner after they occur. Some, out of negligence, report the accidents late or omit to report them; others deliberately give false reports or conceal information in order to avoid taking responsibility for the accidents. Some even resort to vicious tactics such as destroying evidence at the scene or moving bodies in order to fabricate reports or conceal the truth. Such actions may delay the timing of emergency response to an accident, leading to more severe consequences. Regardless of the reasons or who commits such actions, they are prohibited under this law. II. Subjects liable under law This provision specifies that the parties responsible for illegal acts are the entities where special equipment accidents occur and their principal responsible persons, including special equipment manufacturing units, operating units, user units, and their respective principal responsible persons. The principal person in charge refers to the individual who bears leadership responsibility for the production and business operations of a unit, and who has the authority to make decisions and give orders regarding those operations. The principal responsible person of an entity where a special equipment accident occurs varies depending on the organizational structure of that entity: in the case of companies, according to company law, the principal responsible person is generally the chairman, executive director, or manager. For enterprises that are not corporate entities, the main person in charge is usually the factory director, manager, mine supervisor, or other individuals responsible for the management of the enterprise. In short, the person in charge of the entity where a special equipment accident occurs needs to be determined based on the actual circumstances of that entity. It is particularly important to note that those who, although not formally employed by the production and operation unit, actually control its management and operational activities as the real controllers, must also assume responsibility as the main persons in charge of the production and operation unit. III. Illegal acts subject to legal liability 1. The person in charge of the entity where a special equipment accident occurs fails to organize emergency rescue efforts immediately. It is a legal obligation of the entities responsible for the production, operation, and use of special equipment, as well as their principal persons in charge, to organize rescue efforts immediately after an accident involving such equipment occurs. Paragraph 1 of Article 13 of this Law clearly stipulates that the entities responsible for the production, operation, and use of special equipment, as well as their principal persons in charge, are liable for the safety of such equipment. Article 5 of the Work Safety Law stipulates that the principal responsible person of a production and business operation entity is fully responsible for the work safety of that entity. Article 70 of this Law further stipulates that in the event of an accident involving special equipment, the unit where the accident occurs shall take measures in accordance with the emergency response plan, organize rescue efforts, prevent the accident from escalating, and minimize casualties and property damage. Under normal circumstances, the principal person in charge of the entity where a special equipment accident occurs is the first to receive the accident report. If this person can promptly organize and implement appropriate and effective rescue measures, more lives can be saved and property losses can be minimized. The failure to organize rescue efforts immediately referred to here means that the person in charge of the entity where the special equipment accident occurred objectively has the ability to organize such rescue efforts, but fails to do so right away; this is manifested mainly by failing to take action promptly after receiving the report of the accident and thereby delaying things. 2. The principal responsible person of the entity where the special equipment accident occurred abandoned their post during the accident investigation and handling process. During the investigation and handling of special equipment accidents, the person in charge of the unit where the accident occurred must remain at their post. On one hand, the accident investigation team needs to ascertain the sequence of events and the causes of the accident; to do this, it must gather information from relevant personnel at the unit where the accident occurred ; The person in charge of the unit where the accident occurred is responsible for its operation and management, and knows the situation of the enterprise best; requiring them to remain at their post facilitates the accident investigation team in obtaining information from them at any time. On the other hand, the person in charge of the entity where the accident occurred is often the person responsible for the accident; requiring them to remain at their post helps to hold them accountable for the accident. Therefore, those in charge who leave their posts during the accident investigation should be held legally accountable. 3. The principal person in charge of the entity owning the special equipment goes into hiding after a special equipment accident occurs or during the investigation of such an accident. Once an accident occurs involving special equipment, those responsible for the accident are often subject to administrative penalties or even criminal prosecution. The main persons in charge of the entity where the accident took place are among those primarily held accountable for the accident, and they are also the most likely to attempt to flee after the accident occurs. To conduct a smooth investigation of accidents and effectively hold those responsible accountable, it is necessary to prevent them from fleeing after an accident occurs; those who do flee must be held legally liable accordingly. 4. Delayed reporting, false reporting, or concealment of special equipment accidents. Article 70 of this Law clearly stipulates the reporting obligations of entities where special equipment accidents occur, and provides that such reports must not be delayed, falsified, or concealed. Reporting production accidents in a timely, accurate, truthful, and complete manner is an important responsibility of the persons in charge of production, operation, and use entities. For example, Article 4 of the Regulations on the Reporting, Investigation, and Handling of Production Safety Accidents issued by the State Council in 2007 also stipulates clearly that accident reports must be timely, accurate, and complete; no organization or individual shall delay, omit, misreport, or conceal information regarding accidents. Article 9 of the regulation explicitly requires that, upon receiving a report of an accident, the person in charge of the entity must report it to the relevant authorities within 1 hour. The accident reporting system is a bottom-up chain-like system. It is an extremely important link in this chain system for the person in charge of the entity where the accident occurred to report the accident promptly and accurately. If the person in charge of the entity where the accident occurred delays reporting, gives false reports, or conceals information about the accident, it will inevitably lead to a chain reaction, making it difficult to report accidents promptly and accurately in subsequent stages. This, in turn, affects the organization of accident rescue efforts as well as the conduct of accident investigations. Therefore, legal responsibility should be held against the persons in charge of the entity where the accident occurred for delaying, misreporting, or failing to report the accident. A so-called delayed accident report refers to the situation where an accident is not reported within the required time frame, that is, when the reporting of the accident is untimely. False reporting of accidents refers to the act of not reporting accidents accurately, such as exaggerating the number of deaths in an accident or reporting a serious accident as a minor one. The so-called concealment of an accident refers to the act of hiding information about an accident after becoming aware of its occurrence. Falsely reporting or concealing an accident is more serious in nature and has more severe consequences than delaying the reporting of such an accident; it directly results in the relevant **authorities receiving incorrect information about the accident or even being unaware that an accident has occurred, making it impossible to organize effective rescue efforts or conduct investigations into the accident. IV. Forms of legal liability: If the entity responsible for a special equipment accident and its principal responsible persons commit the illegal acts specified in these provisions, they shall bear the following administrative legal liabilities, which include three aspects: (1) A fine of not less than 50,000 yuan but not more than 200,000 yuan shall be imposed on the entity ; (2) Impose a fine of not less than 10,000 yuan but not more than 50,000 yuan on the principal responsible person ; (3) If the person in charge is a **staff member, disciplinary action shall also be taken in accordance with the law. It should be noted that: (1) these three legal liabilities can be enforced concurrently, and their application does not exclude one another. (2) If the person in charge of the entity where a special equipment accident occurs is a **staff member, in addition to the administrative penalty of a fine as mentioned above, he or she shall also be subject to sanctions in accordance with the types and procedures stipulated by relevant laws and administrative regulations. The specific types of sanctions include warnings, reprimands, serious reprimands, demotions, removal from office, and dismissal. Here, **staff members refer to** those assigned by government agencies to work in enterprises and institutions.