A court in Cuba has condemned several government officials to prison terms of between five and 15 years for stealing and selling millions of eggs on the black market, state-run media reported on Friday.
Prosecutors last week requested prison sentences of up to 20 years for the 18 officials, part of a "criminal network" whose egg thefts in 2012 cost the communist island nation some $356,000, the Granma daily newspaper wrote.
Prosecutors said the workers -- employees of the state food distribution agency -- used dodgy accounting, fake receipts and unauthorized delivery routes to set up a black-market egg empire.
They succeeded "thanks to unobservant and/or corrupt supervisors, deficient or absent monitoring mechanisms and complicit or tolerant attitudes," Granma wrote last week.