The Polish crypto exchange Zondacrypto (formerly BitBay), which has been the subject of user complaints since April about the inability to withdraw funds, was, according to Gazeta Wyborcza, laundering money for the Tambov organized crime group. As VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info discovered, the exchange's public and private co-owners have interesting histories. One was convicted of murder. Another mysteriously disappeared back in 2022. And a third has only just disappeared, along with access to wallets containing 4,500 bitcoins.
The most successful Polish crypto exchange was founded in 2014 by 27-year-old Pole Sylwester Suszek, along with his father, Jerzy Suszek, and three friends. He bought a small company, Radhovest, and renamed it BitBay. Business took off, and at its peak, its turnover exceeded one billion zlotys (approximately $300 million) per month. Sušek and his friends became very wealthy, but their exchange posted annual tax losses. In 2018, the exchange's ownership structure was changed: Marek Knisz, Mateusz Bajer, Jerzy Suszek, and Jacek Rogoż left, replacing them with Dubai-based ARIAL INVESTMENT IN COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISES LLC, SkyBay, and CentralBay. In each of these, the controlling stake was registered to a nominee—UAE citizen Aisha Salem Ali Said Alshamsi—but the actual beneficiaries initially remained Sušek and his friends. However, Sušek's friends, as it turned out, were not so simple.
One of them is Marek Knisz, who served eight years in prison for complicity in the murder of a Polish businessman in the 1990s. Marek was 19 years old at the time. Disguised as a police officer, he lured the businessman into a trap. The second is Mateus Bayer, whose relative is a certain Roman Zh, a hotel owner. It was there that Knisz settled after being released from prison. Roman also has an extensive criminal record – he served time for robbery, pimping, and counterfeiting. It is believed that Roman was the real beneficiary of the shares registered to Mateus. These individuals may have used their criminal networks to funnel money from the Tambov organized crime group into BitBay when the exchange began experiencing financial difficulties in 2018. Incidentally, Artur Kubiak, the former head of a police department's cybercrime department, served as BitBay's head of security. This may explain the persistent lack of interest from law enforcement in Suszek's company, even after local journalists reported an attempt to intimidate and bribe the authors of a report about Sylvester Suszek and his crypto business.
In 2018, the exchange received a warning from the Polish financial regulator for illegally providing payment services, and banks refused to work with it. The company urgently needed available funds. Polish officials recently stated that Zondacrypto received these funds from certain Russians. After this, it moved its operating company to Estonia, rebranded, and became Zondacrypto. Soon after, director and founder Sylvester Suszek resigned, and his position was taken by the head of legal services, Polish lawyer Przemysław Kral. Other Suszek assets in various countries were gradually transferred to him. Thus, back in 2021, Kral founded Divisio Holding AG in Switzerland, which soon re-registered BB TRADE PRO LIMITED in London (liquidated in 2024). It was initially co-owned by Sušek and his Luxembourg firm, Luxbay SA. Divisio Holding AG also owns the Czech Expofér Servis House s.r.o. and the Estonian BB Trade Estonia OÜ, which now effectively operates the crypto exchange. The Czech company was listed as a boat rental company, and its accounts were nearly empty for a long time. Then, suddenly, assets worth €7 million appeared, which grew to €22 million by the end of 2024.
After the business was transferred to Kral, Sylvester Jan Sušek disappeared without a trace. On the afternoon of March 10, 2022, he left for a meeting with Marian Wszolek, the owner of a gas station and a large industrial base with a helipad (where Sušek's helicopter was parked). His car was left in the building's parking lot. Wszolek claimed his interlocutor left with a young blonde in her car, but as luck would have it, the gas station cameras were not working that day. Sušek's sister, Nicole, is certain her brother is long dead. He is survived by a common-law wife and a young daughter. However, Sušek did not get along with his wife and was generally indifferent to his family. Although already earning millions of dollars, he not only failed to help his parents but also demanded a thousand zloty debt from his mother. Users of the crypto exchange are the most concerned about his disappearance: along with Sušek, the access code to the company's cryptocurrency wallet, which holds over a billion zlotys in Bitcoin (4,500 BTC), was also lost.
Marian Wszołek, whom Sushek met with, was another early investor in BitBay. Rumors circulated that he provided Sushek with the initial capital to launch the exchange. Wszołek was also the subject of an economic investigation: law enforcement officials believed that his Deltaoils Sp. z o.o. was handling unaccounted volumes of fuel that could have been transferred to From Russia. Neither Deltaoils nor the companies within the same group were known to be involved in fuel imports, but Polish police had a list of certain offshore oil trading companies through which petroleum products were transported from Russia to the Wszolek base. Former head of Monaco's intelligence service, Robert Eringer, had previously spoken about the St. Petersburg organized crime group's connection to the illegal export of oil and the laundering of criminal proceeds through oil offshore companies.
It appears that Przemysław Kral may now follow in the footsteps of Sylwester Suszek. At the height of the payment denial scandal, he stopped responding to employees on the corporate messenger. He had previously left Poland for Monaco – and, as it turns out, Kral holds an Israeli passport. Perhaps his friends are already celebrating the successful operation on a brand new yacht.
