Zondacrypto’s crisis deepened on Friday after Onet’s Polish unit said CEO Przemysław Kral traveled to Israel while prosecutors investigate the exchange over alleged fraud and investor losses.
According to the report shows that Kral has been in Israel for about a week and holds Israeli citizenship, which could complicate potential extradition to Poland. Polish authorities opened last Friday investigated Zondacrypto over alleged fraud and investor losses. Cointelegraph also confirmed that the email address Kral previously used to communicate with him has become unavailable.
The changes come a week after Kral admitted last Thursday that a Zondacrypto frosty wallet containing 4,500 Bitcoins (worth about $350 million) was unavailable, marking his last publicly known announcement at the time of the report. Polish prosecutors identified several hundred potential victims and potential losses of at least PLN 350 million (approximately USD 97 million), According to to Notes from Poland, citing prosecutor spokesperson Michał Binkiewicz.
The case has increased pressure on one of the largest crypto platforms in Central and Eastern Europe, even though Zondacrypto operates on a much smaller scale than global exchanges such as Binance.
Zondacrypto board resignations escalate pressure
The controversy deepened this week after the resignation of a member of the supervisory board of BB Trade Estonia OÜ, the Estonian stock exchange company.
In a LinkedIn post on Monday, former board member Georgi Džaniašvili he said management learned about the scale of the Zondacrypto crisis from media reports, not internally. He also pointed to “material inconsistencies” between public statements and information available to the board.
Source: Georgi Dzhaniashvili
“In a management structure where ownership and executive management are concentrated in one person, effective supervision depends on transparency, timely communication and mutual trust,” Džaniašvili wrote, adding: “Unfortunately, these foundations have been significantly undermined.”
Why is the Zondacrypto case being investigated in Poland?
Although Zondacrypto is registered in Estonia, the company has a significant user base and a significant operational presence in Poland, particularly among Polish-speaking users, which prompted the Polish authorities to launch an investigation following complaints from customers from that country.
Zondacrypto was founded in Katowice in 2014 under the name BitBay by Sylwester Suszek, who disappeared in 2022. Last week, in public comments, Kral claimed that Suszek was responsible for Zondacrypto not having access to its frosty wallet.
Source: Przemysław Kral
The case has become a scorching topic in Polish politics, with Prime Minister Donald Tusk stating that Zondacrypto has ties to Russian capital and political influence, citing the exchange’s early history and subsequent development under up-to-date management.
In the official statement of April 17, Tusk he said it could have affected up to 30,000 Zondacrypto users and compared the case to previous financial scandals in Poland.
Related: Europe’s MiCA system is putting pressure on smaller crypto companies
Tusk also said the lack of a comprehensive legal framework for investor protection meant authorities could only take action later, referring to Poland’s repeated delays in passing legislation aligned with the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation framework.
The case could have broader implications for how the EU approaches cryptocurrency supervision under MiCA, with some member states favoring more centralized supervision rather than national enforcement.
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