Poland has launched a judicial investigation into Zondacrypto, one of the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, on suspicion of fraud and money laundering, according to a report by French outlet BFMTV. Poland’s Justice Minister, Waldemar Żurek, said the authorities are receiving a growing number of complaints from citizens who cannot withdraw their funds from the platform. The regional prosecutor’s office in Katowice put the total damage at no less than 350 million zlotys, or about 83 million euros. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said as many as 30,000 people could have been victimized by the company, which is registered in Estonia.
Speaking on Friday in the Polish parliament, Tusk pointed to the exchange’s murky past, saying its founder disappeared and is presumed dead and that its structure includes funds that are tied to Russian intelligence services and organized crime groups. The same day, the Sejm again failed to override nationalist President Karol Nawrocki’s veto of a cryptocurrency regulation bill. Tusk accused Nawrocki, the country’s nationalist opposition, and the far right of protecting the exchange’s interests and deliberately blocking regulation.
Presidential chief of staff Zbigniew Bogucki said Nawrocki opposed the bill because the government’s proposal was supposedly too restrictive and would not provide real protection for citizens. Meanwhile, Zondacrypto turned out to be the main sponsor of the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference, which was held in the Polish city of Rzeszow at the height of the country’s presidential campaign. At that forum, former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem openly backed Nawrocki’s candidacy. According to Tusk, Zondacrypto also financed foundations close to nationalist and far-right politicians.
Zondacrypto CEO Przemyslaw Kral published a social media post on Thursday calling what was happening a “mechanism of media manipulation” and saying the company remained profitable. However, an earlier analysis by blockchain firm Recoveris found that the bitcoin reserves in Zondacrypto’s hot wallets had fallen by nearly 99% over the past year. Kral said this was because access to a large wallet containing about 4,500 BTC, worth roughly $330 million, had been blocked after the company’s previous owner disappeared without handing over the private key.
