France investigates AliExpress, Shein, Temu and Wish for the sale and distribution of pornographic content accessible to minors

France's Director General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Repression (DGCCRF) contacted the Paris Prosecutor's Office after "noting the marketing of pedopornographic dolls by AliExpress", two days after noting the same type of sales on the platform Shein.

The "description and classification" of these dolls on the website "make it difficult to doubt the pedopornographic nature of the content," that agency said in a statement Monday.

For its part, AliExpress said in a statement, picked up by AFP, that "the ads in question were removed" as soon as they became aware of them, after RMC radio revealed the sale of this type of product on the Asian platform.

The anti-fraud authority also found the marketing of "various pornographic content" on AliExpress and on "other platforms, without any filtering measures" limiting access to them.

"We will collaborate 100% with judicial authorities," announced Shein's spokesman in France, who has responded for the first time to the scandal on RMC. He assures that the affair is "serious, unacceptable and intolerable".

Temu and Wish are also implicated

The Ministry of Economy specified to the press that Temu and Wish, two other online retail platforms, were also being investigated for distribution of pornographic content without measures of age verification, confirming a report published by Le Parisien and Le Figaro newspapers.

"If these behaviors are repeated, I will request that the access of the Shein platform to the French market be banned," Economy Minister Roland Lescure specified on Monday.

Moreover, the anti-fraud authority warned in a statement that "in the absence of effective filtering measures aimed at protecting minors, the law provides for penalties of up to 3 years in prison and fines of 75,000 euros ($86,450)."

"All of these facts were communicated to the platforms involved and brought to the attention of the French public prosecutor and the Authority for the Regulation of Audiovisual and Numerical Communication (Arcom)," the competent regulatory body in the matter, he added.

The prosecutor's office investigates the platforms

Following the complaint, the Paris prosecutor's office opened four separate investigations, one for each platform: Shein, AliExpress, Temu and Wish.

All of them for "distribution of violent, pornographic or infringing to dignity messages accessible to minors."

Within these investigations only the Shein and AliExpress platforms are being investigated for "distribution of image or representation of a minor with pornographic character", that is, for the sale of these dolls with childish appearance, the prosecutor's office specified.

The Temu investigation "has nothing to do with the sale of sex dolls with the appearance of children," that company clarified for its part in a statement sent to AFP on Tuesday.