An obscure figure, believed to have actually run the recently failed European exchange Zondacrypto, is now reportedly hiding in Dubai.
Direct losses from the crash of the coin trading platform, one of the largest in its region, approach $100 million, but the total is likely higher.
Zondacrypto’s real boss identified in Poland
The chief executive of the Polish-rooted exchange Zondacrypto, which suffered a spectacular collapse last month, has been merely a figurehead.
That’s according to publications in Poland, where the Estonia-licensed platform was the leading trading venue for digital assets until just a few weeks ago.
Its CEO, Przemysław Kral, has been missing since he denied reports that the company’s reserves had dropped by more than 99% over the past months.
Kral was initially thought to have fled to Israel, where he is a citizen, in order to avoid extradition. It turns out he is now in the United Arab Emirates.
This week, a leading Polish news outlet, Onet Wiadomości, revealed Zonda’s official manager is in Dubai, together with a man identified as Marian W.
Better known by his nickname Maniek, the latter was the top dog of the crypto business, while Kral was just a “front man,” the website unveiled.
He was also the actual creator of the exchange, the article added, quoting a source from Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office familiar with the ongoing probe.
The coin trading platform started as BitBay in 2014, a crypto service provider founded by Sylwester Suszek, who later sold it. Onet claims he was a puppet, too.
Maniek introduced Suszek to his friend, lawyer Przemysław Kral, who rebranded the exchange to Zondacrypto when he took over its management in 2021.
Kral then moved its headquarters to Estonia, and the platform has since been operated by BB Trade, an entity registered in the Baltic state.
Suszek suddenly disappeared in the spring of the following year. He was last seen at a fuel depot owned by Maniek in the town of Czeladź. Polish investigators suspect he is dead.
Polish exchange run from Monaco with Russian money
Polish publications remarked that Marian W., who was pulling the strings of Zonda, is not an entirely new figure in the saga, which has been unfolding for months.
In January of this year, the TVN24 channel claimed that Maniek was likely the one running the business, and he reportedly did that from Monaco.
This week, judicial authorities in the Principality launched their own money laundering investigation into the company, known in the city-state for its sponsorships in sports, as reported by Cryptopolitan.
There’s also a Russian connection in this case. Citing the country’s Internal Security Agency (ABW), Gazeta Wyborcza recently wrote that Zondacrypto was controlled by the notorious Tambov gang.
The St. Petersburg-based mafia group, one of the oldest and largest in Russia, allegedly helped Sylwester Suszek when he was struggling financially in 2018 and paid for the acquisition.
According to the daily, Zonda’s shareholders were introduced to the Russians by a Polish businessman who worked with them in the fuel market.
This is no longer a story about a Polish exchange that collapsed due to mismanagement, commented the Bitcoin.pl portal, which relayed Onet findings. It added:
“It’s a story about how a man accused of leading an international criminal group involved in illegal fuel trading was supposedly behind Poland’s largest cryptocurrency exchange from the outset.”
Some 30,000 Poles may have become victims of the crash, according to Poland’s Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek, who called Zonda a “pyramid scheme.”
Preliminary estimates suggest their losses amount to at least 350 million zloty (more than $97 million at the time of writing), but the total is likely much higher.
This does not include 4,500 BTC in a wallet, access to which was lost when Suszek went missing, according to Przemysław Kral, who said he was never handed the keys.
Zondacrypto is also at the heart of a major political conflict over crypto regulation between the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Karol Nawrocki and his allies in parliament.
