Agencies warned after data breach

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment has issued strict warnings to third-party environmental monitoring agencies, emphasizing that falsification of data and fraudulent behavior will lead to severe legal consequences.

On Tuesday, the ministry revealed the cases of two third-party agencies involved in fabricating documents in which criminal penalties were imposed not only on the actual controllers and legal representatives of the agencies, but also on those responsible for sampling, analysis and report approval.

The companies are Shanxi Fangchuang Environmental Testing Company in Shanxi province and Xi'an Kena Testing and Calibration Company in Shaanxi province. They falsified sampling data, tampered with sampling periods, fabricated lab results and swapped analysis samples, disrupting market order and harming the environment, the ministry said.