The court imposed prison terms of four to five years; the energy company’s losses exceeded 12.3 million roubles.
A court in Omsk sentenced four local residents to between four and five years in a general-regime penal colony in a case involving electricity theft for cryptocurrency mining and commercial bribery. Lenta.ru reported the verdict, citing the regional prosecutor’s office.
According to the case, five members of an organized group engaged in illegal mining. One of the convicted men, who headed the electrical shop at a unit of TGK-11’s CHP-4 plant, received 525,000 roubles from accomplices. In return, he was to connect mining equipment to the grid, maintain an uninterrupted power supply, repair lines when faults occurred and conceal the crime.
The prosecutor’s office said the illegal electricity use caused TGK-11 losses of more than 12.3 million roubles. The four defendants were ordered jointly to repay 9.5 million roubles, and one was also fined 5.25 million roubles. A participant who had earlier entered a cooperation agreement received a suspended sentence of three years and one month.