An underground egg market may have lead some Cuban officials right to the coop.

Prosecutors in the communist island country are seeking prison sentences of up to 20 years for government officials that are accused of stealing 8 million eggs from state companies.

Granma, the state run newspaper, has reported (via BBC), that the egg-stealing scam has ended up costing Cuba more than $350,000 in lost revenue.

The prosecutors involved with the case have accused a total of 19 officials of using false accounting, fake receipts and unauthorized delivery routes in order to run an egg black market.

According to Granma, the network of egg thievery was made possible "thanks to unobservant and/or corrupt supervisors, deficient or absent monitoring mechanisms and complicit or tolerant attitudes.”

The scheme, according to Cuban authorities, operated between January and October 2012.

The authorities have not yet said when the trial for the 19 officials will actually he held.

In the Marxist country where almost all of the economic activity is regulated and supermarkets and ration shops often run out of basics such as sugar, eggs and toilet paper, the black market thrives.

The average state salary is about $20 a month, and although Cuba provides citizens with a monthly ration card that meets part of their dietary needs, it has become common for low-level workers to take goods from the workplace and swap or sell items in order to supplement a meager income.

President Raul Castro, who launched an anti-corruption campaign in 2009, declared at the time that corruption was a cancer in the country.

The effects of Cuban’s anti-corruption measures have been in the world news lately, as last month the country freed Cy Tokmakjian, the president of a Canadian transport company who was arrested in 2011 on bribery charges, after serving only three years of a 15 year sentence.