Hotline of power engineering specialists:
The owner of a private estate in Zadonsky district was caught with unauthorized connection to the grid of IDGC of Centre.
Employees of IDGC of Centre - Lipetskenergo division, during the scheduled September’s taking of readings, drew attention to an estate in the village of Ksizovo. Next to the two already occupied cottages, the owners began building another house. And a separate wire from the power line led to it:
“It was no problem to use the electricity by the owners legally. From any of their already built houses, they could throw an extension cord and pay for electricity by the meter. After all, both built houses are equipped with metering devices and claims of payment never arose to the owners. But, apparently, having built two cottages, they decided to save money on the third one. And they were very upset when it didn’t work,” said Viktor Kurbatov, the deputy head for sales of services at Zadonsky Distribution Zone.
There is something to be upset about. According to the calculations of specialists, the owners of the estate without the contract spent 43,623 kWh of electricity. For this they will have to pay more than 108 thousand rubles. In addition, the documents were handed over to the police for the initiation of an administrative violation case under article 7. 19 of the Code of Administrative Offenses: unauthorized connection and use of electrical, thermal energy, oil or gas. The penalty prescribed by law is a fine of 10 to 15 thousand rubles.
Also, a solid bill and a large fine threaten an entrepreneur from the village of Yusovo in Chaplyginsky district. The villager has a small milk processing shop. He has a debt on electricity bills, and at the request of LESK, Lipetskenergo’s specialists de-energized the shop. However, during the control check, it turned out that the businessman had voluntarily connected to the grid of IDGC of Centre. According to the act of non-contractual consumption, he will have to pay for 101,376 kWh, in rubles this figure is equal to 904,667 rubles.
“I would like to remind entrepreneurs that the law provides for criminal liability for theft of electricity. Article 165 of the Criminal Code: causing damage to property by fraud or abuse of trust, provides for a penalty of three hundred thousand rubles to forced labour for two years. For such sanctions, it is enough to steal electricity for 250 thousand rubles. In the case of the Chaplygin entrepreneur, the amount is much more, according to this fact, a statement has already been sent to the law enforcement agencies,” explained the consequences of non-contractual consumption Sergey Vetrov, the deputy director for sales and development of services at IDGC of Centre - Lipetskenergo division.
In total, over eight months of this year, Lipetskenergo revealed electricity theft among entrepreneurs worth more than 50 million rubles. About 6 million more will have to be paid by ordinary citizens who voluntarily connected to grids or interfered with the work of metering devices.
