Zondacrypto, once one of Poland’s best-known crypto exchanges, is at the center of a widening criminal investigation after a Polish court approved pretrial detention for a fifth suspect.
Roman Ż., whose surname has been abbreviated under Polish legal convention, was charged with belonging to an organized criminal group and allegedly helping divert customer funds through computer fraud. Prosecutors say the scheme involved manipulating the exchange’s data and transaction systems.
Authorities allege that at least 7.8 million Polish złoty, worth roughly $2 million, was taken from Zondacrypto users. The alleged fraud involved unauthorized changes, deletions and additions to company data, as well as interference with the way information was processed and transmitted.
Roman Ż. was detained in Poland’s Silesia region on Saturday. Police also seized documents connected to the exchange. He denies the accusations and has provided a statement to investigators.
The case adds another layer to the increasingly tangled story surrounding Zondacrypto, which has been struggling to account for its operations and leadership since the spring.
The Zondacrypto mystery keeps getting darker
The company began in Katowice in 2014 under the name BitBay, founded by Sylwester Suszek. In 2020, the business moved its registration to Estonia and adopted the Zondacrypto name under its parent company, BB Trade Estonia.
The exchange claimed to serve 1.3 million customers, most of them in Poland. Today, many of those users remain unable to access their funds after withdrawals were frozen and the platform effectively disappeared in April.
The leadership story is almost as unsettling.
Suszek vanished in March 2022. Four years later, Przemysław Kral, the lawyer who became chief executive after Suszek disappeared, also went missing. Kral was last seen on April 16, after telling customers that the exchange held 4,500 BTC that could only be unlocked by Suszek.
That claim has become one of the most striking details in the Zondacrypto saga, particularly as authorities investigate what prosecutors describe as an organized group operating between 2020 and 2026 with the goal of taking control of Suszek’s assets.
On June 29, Estonia’s financial intelligence unit revoked the license of BB Trade Estonia, removing another piece of the regulatory framework around the exchange.
The latest detention follows a separate court decision on September 4, when Anna P., Jaromira W. and Rafał Z. were placed in pretrial detention for three months.
Prosecutors have linked the trio to a series of alleged financial crimes. Among the accusations is that almost €8 million was moved out of the operator’s account last October and used to purchase property in France.
Investigators also allege that a €2.9 million loan was marked as repaid even though it had not been settled. Two properties in Katowice, valued at 700,000 and 800,000 złoty, were allegedly transferred without payment.
Authorities further accuse the group of laundering 7.5 million złoty through fictitious property transactions, alongside another allegation involving 1.7 million złoty.
There is also a charge connected directly to the investigation into Suszek’s disappearance. Prosecutors allege that Anna P. interfered with that investigation by removing a hard drive containing footage from a gas station’s surveillance system and encouraging false testimony.
All three suspects have denied the allegations.
For Zondacrypto customers, the legal proceedings are unfolding against an even more immediate problem: access to the exchange itself. The platform froze withdrawals in April, leaving users caught between a criminal investigation, missing executives and uncertainty over the assets supposedly held by the company.
Poland’s Katowice regional prosecutor’s office opened the broader case in April, focusing on large-scale fraud and money laundering. Since then, investigators say they have received several thousand complaints.
The fifth detention does not resolve the central questions hanging over Zondacrypto. Instead, it adds another suspect to a case already defined by vanished executives, frozen withdrawals and millions of dollars in allegedly misappropriated customer funds.
For an exchange that once presented itself as a major gateway into crypto for Polish users, the story now looks less like a routine corporate collapse and more like a sprawling investigation into what happened behind the platform’s walls.