Paris
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France has threatened to cut off Shein’s access to the French market after the Chinese e-commerce platform was accused by French authorities of selling “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.”
Until 4 a.m. local time Monday, the dolls were available for purchase on the French version of Shein’s platform, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV, prompting a stark warning from French finance minister Roland Lescure.
“I want to be very clear: If these behaviors are repeated, we will be entitled to… ban access to the French market for the Shein platform,” he told BFMTV Monday. “These horrible objects are illegal,” he added.
France’s anti-fraud office, the DGCCRF, accused Shein Saturday of selling the childlike sex dolls, saying in a statement: “Their description and their categorization on the site make it difficult to doubt the pedopornographic nature of the content.”
Shein did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.
But in a statement to BFMTV, Shein said it had immediately removed all the relevant products from sale once they had been flagged.
“We take this situation extremely seriously,” Quentin Ruffat, a spokesperson for Shein, told BFMTV. “This type of content is completely unacceptable and goes against all the values we stand for. We are taking immediate corrective action and strengthening our internal mechanisms to prevent such a situation from happening again.”
French authorities have passed the case onto French prosecutors, as well as the French telecom regulator, according to Lescure.
In its statement, the anti-fraud office said the sharing of pedophilic material on “electronic networks” is punishable with up to seven years’ imprisonment and a €100,000 ($115,000) fine under French law. It also said the sale of the dolls shows Shein does not have sufficient safeguards in place against minors accessing pornographic material on its website, also a crime under French law.
France’s High Commissioner for Childhood, Sarah El-Haïry, told BFMTV Monday that she wanted to identify both the sellers and buyers of these dolls.
The timing of this scandal couldn’t be worse for the Chinese platform. On Wednesday, Shein is due to open its very first brick-and-mortar store in Paris – the first in the world – which will be followed by more shops across France.
In 2018, online retail giant Amazon was embroiled in a similar affair, after third-party sellers used the platform to hawk child sex dolls. Amazon removed the products from sale.
