The Popular Municipal Court of Baraguá, in Ciego de Ávila, held a trial on Thursday described as "exemplary" for the theft of dielectric oil from a transformer bank belonging to an agricultural cooperative, an act that deprived 12 homes of electricity service, according to an official source.
The case involved the
According to what was established during the process, the custodian of the entity abandoned their duties, which allowed outsiders to appropriate the product.
The official source described the situation as negligence with "direct and severe consequences for the community and local production."
In addition to leaving affected families without electricity, the theft severely disrupted the productive activities of the cooperative, which relies on dielectric oil for the operation of its electrical system.
The offense judged was classified as "failure to fulfill the duty to preserve assets in economic entities," a provision that penalizes the negligence of a worker who, by abandoning their responsibilities, allows for damage or theft of resources from an entity.
This qualification differs from sabotage of the National Electroenergy System, which carries sentences ranging from seven to 30 years, life imprisonment, and even the death penalty, under Opinion 475/2025 of the People's Supreme Court.
The information about the trial did not specify the identity of the person responsible for the custody of the dielectric oil, nor the sanction issued by the People's Municipal Court of Baraguá against the worker, so details about the penalty or measure imposed after the process are not known.
The municipality of Baraguá already had a tragic background linked to this phenomenon. In August, a man died from electrocution while climbing a transformer bank in the Gutiérrez settlement, allegedly to extract dielectric oil.
Ciego de Ávila is one of the provinces most affected by this type of crime. The stolen product is resold on the black market as a substitute for fuel for tractors and agricultural machinery, at prices ranging from 500 to over 1,000 Cuban pesos per liter, which fuels a constant demand amid the scarcity of fuels.
The wave of exemplary trials has intensified in September. In recent days, the Provincial Court of Pinar del Río sentenced Yoelvys Álvarez Gavilán to 12 years in prison for stealing screws from a photovoltaic park.
Days before, in Holguín, two defendants - an uncle and a nephew - were sentenced to 10 and 8 years, respectively, for stealing dielectric oil from a substation that left more than 4,000 customers without electricity for over 24 hours.
Despite the punitive escalation, the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, acknowledged before the National Assembly in July that theft occurs "daily" and that "the amount of oil that has been stolen from us is almost similar to what we are producing in the same period that we are being robbed."
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