Paraguay adds 18 criminal complaints against miners and doubts about corruption

Paraguayan authorities have detected a Bitcoin (BTC) mining farm with an illegal connection, amid the official crusade to prevent “energy theft” and the latest tariff increases affecting the industry. With the discovery, they have added some 18 criminal complaints against miners.

Officials from the Eastern Regional Loss Management Office of the National Electricity Administration (ANDE) They disconnected and removed the connection last Friday. The house depended on a low voltage line, located at km 21, Monday side, in the city of Minga Guazú.

During the operation, which had the owner’s consent, the technicians verified that the irregular connection was being used to mine bitcoins.

According to the inspection images, There were about 10 ASICs in the buildingThe equipment generated a loss of 49,749,288 guaraníes per month, a sum equivalent to 7,000 dollars.

The amount, in addition to the costs of the intervention and the corresponding local fines, must be paid by the owner of the property.

The ANDE procedure was carried out last Friday in the Alto Paraná area, one of the jurisdictions where the most similar incidents were detected due to irregular connections of the population.

It was officially announced that on Monday, July 8, a formal criminal complaint would be filed for the crimes of illegal theft of electrical energy, disruption of public service and sabotage, which correspond to articles 173, 218 and 274 of the Paraguayan Penal Code.

As reported by CriptoNoticias, several political and Congressional leaders have been calling attention to the alleged complicity of the organization. In recent days, the voice of the Paraguayan senator, Rafael Filizzolawho made explicit mention of the latter incident:

“Cases of illegal crypto mining continue to mount, who knows how many more there are! But how can it be that there are no defendants or indictments at ANDE? Is no one guilty of these deals?”

Rafael Filizzola, senator of Paraguay.

According to official reports, as of July 4, ANDE has filed a total of 17 criminal cases for theft of electrical energy. The latest case of Minga Guazú is number 18. More than 9,410 data processors, 42 transformers and conductors of various types used for illegal supply were seized during the proceedings.

Despite the raids and disconnections, the organization remains in the public eye. On July 3, Senator Enrique Salym Buzarquis pointed out that “the senior management of ANDE” and “the complicity of its officials are billing in average 500,000 dollars in bribes for stealing energy from the Paraguayan people with illegal cryptocurrencies.”

This information came to light through statements made by an ANDE engineer himself, Lucio Ortiz, while he was carrying out an operation to remove illegal transformers.

In a statement, the regulatory authority “categorically” rejected the legislator’s comments and said that “given the seriousness of the aforementioned events,” it requested that an investigation be launched to find out what was reported. But these are not the only problems that have arisen recently. Mining companies that operate legally filed a complaint about the increase in energy rates for the sector, whose costs rose by 16%.

They also warned that this price increase will lead to the migration of companies to other countries and economic damage to the national treasury. As CriptoNoticias reported, some of these projects are moving to Argentina.