Libyan authorities have arrested 12 Chinese expatriates on charges of illegal mining of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and others.
The Libyan Attorney General’s Office said that 10 were arrested in the city of Misrata, and two others in the capital, Tripoli.
The Office published a video of the two sites, after they were raided by the police. Law enforcement officers found computers used to perform complex calculations. “These computers have been proven to be used for illegal mining of virtual currencies,” the statement said.
Since 2018, the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) has imposed a ban on investing in cryptocurrencies. However, a study published in December 2022 by the Policy Center for the New South (PCNS) stated that about 1.3% of the total population in Libya ignore this ban.
Libyan authorities say that mining drains electrical power. The war-torn country has long suffered from frequent power outages. Libyans are sometimes in complete darkness as a result of theft of electricity cables, or militia fighting in the streets and damage to the main electrical transformers.
In a separate context, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) revealed a leaked financial review claiming that the CBL failed to account for the delivery of US$4.8 billion worth of dinar banknotes, from a British printing company.
Libya has two competitor central banks run by two rival governments, in the east and west of the war-torn country.
Documents provided by the Tripoli-based central bank showed a major discrepancy in the amount the institution should have received, according to its contracts with De La Rue, and the amount accounted for in receipts it issued.
Deloitte found that 6.5 billion dinars (worth about $4.8 billion) were unaccounted for in the paperwork.