Illegal crypto-mining farm dismantled in Ukraine

The leadership of the Lviv branch of the state-owned enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has been suspected of running an underground mining farm. This is reported on the website of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI).

The data centre was located in the administrative premises of the Rava-Ruska Forest Enterprise branch. Due to overloaded utility networks, there were widespread outages affecting residential buildings and critical infrastructure, the SBI noted.

Preliminary estimates put the damage at more than 1.5 million hryvnias. The defendants — including the former director, his deputy (the current head), the chief accountant and others — earned at least 4 million hryvnias.

Law enforcement authorities seized equipment and computer hardware valued at over 3 million hryvnias. A criminal case has been opened.

Earlier in May, Ukrainian police, in coordination with the FBI blocked nine cryptocurrency exchanges, which were used to launder criminal proceeds.