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The head of the Polish Olympic Committee has been detained as part of a fraud investigation into a collapsed cryptocurrency platform with links to the country’s rightwing opposition.
Radosław Piesiewicz, president of the committee, was arrested on Thursday in a probe into alleged bribes linked to a sponsorship deal with Zondacrypto, which stopped trading in April after losing investors at least 350mn zlotys (€81mn), according to investigators.
Piesiewicz is the first prominent arrest in the scandal, which has also reverberated through the country’s politics after Polish-run, Estonian-registered Zondacrypto — which reported having 1.3mn registered users before its collapse — funded rightwing events, foundations and media.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk has sought to connect the company with organised crime and Russia as well as the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS), which led Poland until 2023 and still controls the presidency.
After Zondacrypto’s collapse, investigators probed whether it had misled investors before beginning bankruptcy proceedings. They have since turned their sights to personal gifts that Piesiewicz allegedly received from the company, including a luxury Swiss watch worth €40,000, according to the justice minister. Piesiewicz has denied wrongdoing.
In the run-up to last year’s presidential election, won by the rightwing PiS candidate Karol Nawrocki, Zondacrypto sponsored Poland’s first gathering of the US-based Conservative Political Action Conference. At the conference, Nawrocki was endorsed by US President Donald Trump’s then homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem.
Since then, Tusk has also been at loggerheads with Nawrocki, a PiS nominee who has blocked dozens of government bills, including legislation intended to regulate Poland’s cryptocurrency market and bring it into line with the latest EU rules.
In the wake of Zondacrypto’s collapse, Tusk has drawn attention to the platform’s history of sponsoring PiS-organised events and giving money to foundations run by the party’s politicians, including former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro. Last month, the government asked the US to extradite Ziobro to stand trial on several separate Polish fraud charges.
The company has also provided advertising funding to TV Republika, which has become Poland’s most popular rightwing news channel. That funding is under investigation but the broadcaster’s majority shareholder, Tomasz Sakiewicz, has denied wrongdoing, saying Republika had a regular advertising deal with Zondacrypto whose terms were protected by commercial confidentiality.
In April, Tusk also accused Zonda of receiving “Russian money”, but did not provide evidence. His justice minister later said the funding could have come from Russian criminal gangs — a claim that has not been corroborated by prosecutors and which is denied by figures linked to Zondacrypto.
In June, Nawrocki vetoed a third attempt by Tusk’s government to introduce new crypto market rules. The president has warned against regulatory over-reach that could “drive the entire cryptocurrency market out of Poland”, but the prime minister is now attributing his opposition directly to Zondacrypto’s support for PiS.
“Now we know why Nawrocki and PiS stubbornly blocked the cryptocurrency bill like maniacs,” Tusk wrote on X on Wednesday. “Cash for watches worth €40,000, for media, election parties, foundations of rightwing politicians. The [TV] series Zonda is just getting started.”
Nawrocki has said he first vetoed Tusk’s crypto legislation before the Zondacrypto scandal emerged and that the government should be held responsible for failing to detect problems at a platform used by many Poles.
When the investigation opened in April, Zondacrypto’s chief executive at the time of its collapse, Przemysław Kral, who was reported at the time to be living in Israel, denied any wrongdoing. He argued his company ran into liquidity problems and could not meet the pace of withdrawal requests because a “politically motivated” campaign was convincing investors to abandon the platform.
Jakub Rutnicki, Poland’s sports minister, welcomed the arrest. “Such a person should never have been the president” of the Polish Olympic Committee, Rutnicki wrote on X.
