I can't accuse them of anything without solid proof, however, I can speculate as well. Another point is the fact that they could have delayed responding to the Sanctions, I mean come on!
I don't know, it's my personal bias, it's the bad experiences that people share around but when it comes to mining and mining companies it's always the story of the boy who cried wolf with a serious twist. Every time the villagers came there was no wolf but a wolf pack and when the boy finally yells fox it turns out to be not a fox but still a wolf in disguise. I simply can't erase all this experience that started with mining equipment producers that said one month delay in shipping when they actually were packing their bags as they had no miner, cloud mining companies, etc etc ...etc!
Yeah, they have the excuse, their partner as I understand it's either Bitriver or some subsidiary of them, but man, if that company is under sanctions and you can't deal with them anymore how is it that you can't take your gear out but you can still sell it to them and get money under sanctions! And the thing that pisses me off the most is that although I watch their Twitter account this one got nearly undetected, If it weren't for your topic I wouldn't have known but memes and investments advice and praising themselves how great they are, there is a ton each day.
Their tweets on the days the sanctions-hit bitriver:
https://twitter.com/compass_mining/status/1516457447984148484https://twitter.com/compass_mining/status/1517195208538140672To me is like taking a piss on your customers and laughing at why they are wet! /ending rant!
The worse part is that probably not that many will learn the lesson, people in Brazil will still buy IOU checks from a company in the US run by a guy who has Canadian citizenship that has a deal in Russia through a Switzerland intermediary, and when they ask what they can do to get their money...what a surprise!
All in all there is no clean & easy way out of the mess but then again for a myriad of reasons already covered here and in other threads I sure as hell would NEVER have used Compass -- or ANY other company like them where you have no solid proof of 'your' physical miner even existing. As Mikey has said it is far too easy for a company to contract out the hash rate = to your 'purchase'. A few companies have done that in the past and is a cert bet that others will do it again.
Even if they put a GPS tracker on them I wouldn't touch such a contract, I remember a story (but I forgot their name), a company that hosted a few miners, allowed the people to visit the "data center" and suddenly the "partner" decided to load them on a truck and poff! 100 miners gone!
Not your keys locking doors to the miners on your property, not your miners!