Irkutskenergosbyt filed 137 lawsuits against ‘grey’ miners in 2021

The company Irkutskenergosbyt filed 137 lawsuits last year to recover 63 million rubles from owners of mining farms for stolen electricity, according to Andrey Kharitonov, head of the company, as reported by TASS.

According to him, in 2021 Irkutskenergosbyt identified 1,213 cases of the so-called grey mining. The latter refers to mining cryptocurrencies under tariffs for households, which are significantly lower than those for businesses.

Kharitonov noted that the court has already granted 19 claims totaling 21 million rubles.

He said that in court it is difficult to prove mining activity, as representatives of the company often cannot access the territory where the mining farms are located:

“We prove the fact of consuming electricity service not for household needs solely on the basis of indirect signs: noise, high consumption, thermal imaging surveys, voltage surges in neighbors.”

The head of Irkutskenergosbyt emphasised that cryptocurrency mining significantly affects electricity consumption volumes. In 2020, the population using the company’s services consumed about 7 billion kWh, and in 2021 the figure approached 8 billion kWh, he noted.

In October, the governor of Irkutsk Oblast, Igor Kobzev, wrote a letter to Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak accusing “grey” miners of rising electricity consumption. He also proposed legislatively to enshrine mining as a form of entrepreneurial activity.

The idea was supported by several ministries. In the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation stated that miners would not consume electricity under tariffs for households.

Later Kobzev expressed readiness to provide sites for industrial mining, and in the State Duma proposed to make Irkutsk Oblast a pilot region to move miners out of the “grey zone” and announced the preparation of a bill regulating cryptocurrency mining.

Meanwhile the Bank of Russia is strongly opposed to mining. In its report the regulator urged banning cryptocurrency mining because of the heavy load on power grids, environmental harm, and the creation of “demand for infrastructure to conduct operations with cryptocurrencies”.

ForkLog’s experts interviewed described the Bank of Russia’s arguments as untenable.

The Bank of Russia’s report is not a final document on regulating the industry in Russia, emphasize in the State Duma. According to deputies Anatoly Aksakov and Andrey Lugovoy, the government and other authorities do not support the central bank’s prohibitive rhetoric.

As of now, mining in Russia is not banned, and there is no explicit regulatory framework yet.

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