Polish Prosecutors Charge Former Police Officer Over Zondacrypto Collapse

Polish prosecutors have charged a former police officer over the collapsed Zondacrypto exchange, as investigators search the fuel depot where its founder was last seen before he disappeared four years ago.

Officers from the Central Bureau for Combating Cybercrime, Poland's specialist cybercrime force, detained Artur K. on Tuesday on the orders of the National Prosecutor's Office organized crime department, which said he faces two counts.

The first is membership of an organized criminal group. The second bundles together causing property damage on a great scale to BitBay, BB Trade Estonia and a third entity, aiding the misappropriation of entrusted property, aiding computer fraud, and money laundering.

Suspects are identified by their first name and an initial under Polish convention. Artur K. is a former police officer, Polish Radio reported, citing the state news agency PAP.

A search of his home turned up documentation on the exchange's operations. He was being questioned as a suspect, after which prosecutors will decide whether to seek pre-trial detention, said Anna Adamiak, spokeswoman for the prosecutor-general. The office did not say whether he had responded to the charges.

Police from Katowice are meanwhile searching and examining the fuel depot where Zondacrypto founder Sylwester Suszek was last seen before vanishing in March 2022, working under a team of prosecutors with expert witnesses and what the office called advanced specialized forensic equipment. The file treats his case as unlawful deprivation of liberty rather than a disappearance, and one of the earlier suspects is accused of removing a hard drive from the CCTV recorder at a filling station.

Suszek founded the exchange in Katowice in 2014 as BitBay. It moved its registration to Estonia in 2020 under BB Trade Estonia, took the Zondacrypto name and claimed 1.3 million clients, most of them Polish. It froze withdrawals and went dark in April, and Estonia's financial intelligence unit revoked the operator's license on June 29.