The Federal Customs Service of Russia is investigating a criminal case against the Far Eastern Commercial and Industrial Company (DTPK), which is suspected of evading customs duties in the amount of about $ 1.2 million. According to CoinDesk , from August 2017 to February 2018, the company imported into the Russian Federation 6 012 ASIC miners from Bitmain.

The search warrant issued as part of the investigation indicated that DTPK filed fake documents with customs officials with incorrect prices for ASIC miners Antminer S9-13.5, L3 + and D3, as well as details for them.

As it was announced by the representatives of DTPK, they received the miners from the Korean company MSR Co. through the Hong Kong company Manli. However, as it was possible to establish, MSR did not enter into a contract with DTPK, with the exception of the contract expired in 2012.

“The Director General of DTPK Artem Bublik entered into a criminal conspiracy with unidentified persons no later than August 8, 2017, in order to avoid paying customs duties on a large scale when importing ASIC miners and their dietary elements into the Eurasian Economic Union, ” the warrant says.

Also during the investigation, the police searched two offices of Intelion Mining in Moscow and Tula, as they received information that they were allegedly carrying imported DTPK miners.

“Intelion has no relation to miners under investigation, but in any case, law enforcement agencies confiscated 2500 ASIC, because our clients did not provide relevant documentation, ” said Alexander Shashkov, founder of Intelion Mining, and advised colleagues to always check documents on equipment that they take on hosting.

Bitmain representative in Russia Yulia Fetisova did not rule out that ASIC devices can enter the country through gray imports.

“Gray schemes are used by Chinese resellers and do not go through Bitmain’s Russian office. Often, entrepreneurs do not want to wait for delivery, so they turn to dealers, ”Fetisova added.

In addition, Bitmain does not provide logistics services for Russia, and the buyer needs to independently decide on the delivery of the purchased goods.

As member of the Commission for the Legal Support of the Digital Economy at the Moscow Branch of the Russian Association of Lawyers of Russia Yuriy Brises, explained to Blockchain Journal, in the absence of legislative regulation in the Russian Federation, most mining projects are in the gray zone.

“In this situation we are talking about customs fraud. A case is reduced to three components: mining equipment is rarely declared as such, often (1) or it is started up illegally; (2) either the parts are imported and the duty is paid much less; (3) either one equipment is declared, but another one is delivered.

Another problem is the lack of a list of recommended mining equipment. That is, the equipment becomes obsolete faster than it has time to get legal clearance. Therefore, cases arise when none of the parties can prove their case with a sufficient degree of probability. Until customs regulation introduces special general criteria for mining equipment, it’s impossible to talk about the possibility of legal import of such devices, ”the lawyer believes.

To date, official comments from DTPK have not been obtained.

Recall that in March 2018 Russians were obliged to declare mining equipment imported into the country. Then, customs officials said that the miners are subject to restrictions that apply to the importation of goods with encryption and cryptography functions.

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