Chinese official sentenced to life in prison for Bitcoin mining, corruption

A Chinese language authorities official has been sentenced to life in jail for each illegitimate enterprise operations of working a 2.four billion Chinese language Yuan ($329 million) Bitcoin mining enterprise and unrelated costs of corruption. 

In keeping with native media stories, on Aug. 22, the Intermediate Individuals’s Court docket of Hangzhou Metropolis sentenced Xiao Yi, a former member of the Jiangxi Provincial Political Consultative Convention Social gathering Group and Vice Chairman, to life in jail for corruption and abuse of energy.

The corruption costs stem from non-crypto-related actions of bribery from 2008 to 2021. The abuse of energy costs, courting from 2017 to 2021, stem from offering monetary and electrical energy subsidies to Jiumu Group Genesis Expertise, a agency based mostly within the Metropolis of Fuzhou that at one level operated greater than 160,000 Bitcoin (BTC) mining machines.

Prosecutors say that Yi “lined up” the mining operation by instructing related departments to manufacture statistical stories and alter the classification of electrical energy consumption. From 2017 to 2020, Jiumu’s electrical energy consumption accounted for 10% of Fuzhou’s complete electrical energy consumption. “Yi pleaded responsible and repented, actively returned the stolen funds, and all of the bribes and their earnings have been seized,” wrote the ruling Justice of the Peace of the Hangzhou Individuals’s Court docket.

At present, China bans all types of cryptocurrency transactions, alternate operations, and fiat-to-crypto onboarding however has stopped in need of prohibiting outright possession. In an Aug. three choice, a Chinese language courtroom dominated {that a} $10 million Bitcoin lending contract was invalid based mostly on the nation’s Bitcoin ban with no risk of authorized debt restoration. On Aug. 14, a Chinese language nationwide was sentenced to 9 months in jail for serving to an acquaintance buy Tether (USDT), profiting $20 from the transaction. 

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