Notable political and financial personalities, including the brother of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, were claimed to be behind some of the mines.
According to a government announcement today, Kazakhstan’s crackdown on illicit cryptocurrency mining has caused another 106 miners to cease operations.
According to the statement, 55 mines shuttered voluntarily and 51 were forced to cease as a result of investigations by the country’s financial monitoring agency and other official organisations. According to the statement, the 51 are accused of tax and customs fraud and illegally storing equipment in special economic zones.
Inspections uncovered the involvement of many prominent political and corporate personalities in crypto mining. According to the statement, they included Bolat Nazarbayev, the brother of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev; Alexander Klebanov, chairman of Central Asian Electric Power Corp., which provides electricity to more than 2 million people; and Kairat Itegmenov, Kazakhstan’s 17th-richest man, according to Forbes.
Since fall 2021, the central Asian nation has been experiencing significant energy shortages, in part because to an inflow of cryptocurrency miners from China, but also due to infrastructural problems. The administration has chosen to tighten down on unlawful mining in order to address the country’s energy crisis.
According to a statement, the financial monitoring agency has initiated 25 criminal charges and confiscated 67,000 computers worth 100 billion Kazakhstani tenge ($193 million).
The authorities said in late February that it had shut down 202 megawatts of unlawful cryptocurrency mining.
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