Cuba charged 30 people with stealing 133 tons of chicken meat, which they then sold on the street. It’s the rarest looting that comes as the communist-led state faces food shortages, Reuters reported, according to the News. ro.

chicken meat Photo: Zoonar GmbH / Alamy / Alamy / Profimedia

Thieves took the meat, which was in 1,660 white boxes, from a government warehouse in the country’s capital, Havana, and used the proceeds to buy refrigerators, laptops, televisions and air conditioners, Friday evening television reported.

Chicken meat is part of the products that in the Cuban system are included in the “ration card”, introduced after the revolution of Fidel Castro in 1959 to provide subsidized basic food for the entire population.

The amount of chicken meat stolen was equivalent to a month’s chicken ration for an average-sized province at current distribution rates, said Rigoberto Mustelier, director of COPMAR, the state-run food distributor.

Among the thieves, shift supervisors and IT workers at the factory

The amount of chicken available through the ration card has fallen sharply in recent years as the economic crisis has left the communist state with shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Many subsidized products reach the public days, weeks or even months behind schedule, forcing people who earn an average monthly salary of 4,209 pesos ($14 at the unofficial exchange rate) to find other ways to make ends meet.

Authorities did not specify when exactly the theft of chicken meat occurred, but specified that it probably happened between midnight and 2 a.m., when they noticed temperature drops in the cold storage. Video surveillance recorded trucks taking products outside the warehouse.

According to a television report, the 30 defendants include shift managers and employees of the IT program at the factory, as well as security agents and outsiders not directly related to the company. If found guilty, the suspects may be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

Crime has increased with economic hardship since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, although reports of large-scale thefts like this one are still rare on the Caribbean island.