The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection received over 200 signals related to Zondacrypto

The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection received over 200 signals related to Zondacrypto; almost all of them were received in the last two weeks – the Office reported to PAP. In January 2025, the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection initiated explanatory proceedings against the operator of zondacrypto.com – BB Trade Estonia OÜ.

The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection told PAP that the President of the Office may investigate whether an entrepreneur uses practices that violate the collective interests of consumers – e.g. through unfair contractual provisions. “In this context, on January 31, 2025, the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection initiated explanatory proceedings against the operator of the zondacrypto.com website – BB Trade Estonia OÜ. We are analyzing the principles of concluding, performing and terminating contracts in terms of possible violations and prohibited clauses,” the Office said.

He emphasized that he had received over 200 signals related to Zondacrypto, and almost all of them were received in the last two weeks. “The proceedings are ongoing,” noted the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.

In the information sent to PAP by the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, it was pointed out that in the case of Zondacrypto, irregularities may be much more serious than prohibited provisions in the regulations, potentially even – as the Office put it – “criminal activity”.

“The emerging themes concern not only possible misleading, but above all possible fraud, incorrect use of funds, money laundering or the still unexplained disappearance of the founder of Zondacrypto. The Prime Minister of the Council of Ministers pointed out the particularly serious and multi-layered nature of this matter several times and firmly. Such issues go far beyond the mandate of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection,” the Office noted.

“From the beginning, the main burden of clarifying the case rests with institutions with competences in the field of combating financial crime, including the Prosecutor's Office, the Internal Security Agency and the General Inspectorate of Financial Information, because we are talking about suspicions of fraud or money laundering, requiring the use of operational techniques, complex investigative tools or analysis of financial flows. We have recognized from the beginning the priority and competence of these institutions to clarify this case,” added the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.

The media wrote at the beginning of April that the Zondacrypto cryptocurrency exchange may have serious liquidity problems. The analysis, obtained by money.pl and Wirtualna Polska, revealed a decline in bitcoin reserves of the Zondacrypto exchange by 99%. Users report problems with withdrawing funds, journalists reported. The president of Zondacrypto, Przemysław Kral, assured in a statement that Zondacrypto is a stable, solvent and safe entity, and the money.pl analysis is “erroneous, untrue and unfair.”

The Zondacrypto exchange has a portfolio of 4.5 thousand. bitcoins worth over USD 300 million, but – as Kral reported on Thursday – the keys to them are held by the missing Sylwester Suszekfounder of the BitBay exchange, the predecessor of Zondacrypto. Suszek, referred to as the “king of cryptocurrencies”, went missing in March 2022.

An investigation into the possible fraud of customers of the Zondacrypto cryptocurrency exchange was initiated by the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Katowice. According to investigators, the total amount of damage is currently no less than PLN 350 million.

On Sunday, a joint statement by former members of the supervisory board: Veronica Tugo (chairman), Guido Buehler and Dzhanashvili was published on the Linkedin profile of Giorgi Dzhanashvili, one of the members of the Supervisory Board of the Estonian company BB Trade Estonia OÜ, whose cryptocurrency license allows Zondacrypto to provide services. They announced that they had independently resigned from their positions on the supervisory board.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last week that, according to estimates, as many as 30,000 people may be harmed by Zondacrypto's activities. (PAP)

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