PARIS, Nov 4 — Asian e-commerce giant Shein said yesterday it was banning sex dolls from sale on its sites globally after French authorities condemned it for featuring ones resembling children.

France’s finance minister had threatened to ban the retailer from the country if it resumed selling the childlike dolls, just days before it opens its first physical store in Paris.

The Paris prosecutors’ office said it had opened investigations against Shein, and also rival online retailers AliExpress, Temu and Wish, over the sale of sex dolls.

The probes were for distributing “messages that are violent, pornographic or improper, (and) accessible to minors,” the office told AFP.

The investigations were launched after France’s anti-fraud unit reported on Saturday that Shein was selling “childlike” dolls of a likely pornographic nature.

French daily Le Parisien published a photo of one of the dolls sold on the platform, accompanied by an explicitly sexual caption.

The pictured doll measured around 80 centimetres in height and held a teddy bear.

Shortly after the fraud watchdog’s statement, Shein announced the dolls had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry.

It later announced, in a statement yesterday, that it was imposing a “total ban on sex-doll-type products” and had deleted all listings and images linked to them.

A spokesperson told AFP the ban applied globally.

“These publications came from third-party vendors, but I take personal responsibility,” said Shein’s chief executive Donald Tang.