Creditors of Zondacrypto, once Poland's largest crypto exchange, could file more than €700 million in claims after its Estonian operator was declared bankrupt, according to the court-appointed trustee.
- BB Trade Estonia OÜ, the Tallinn-registered company that operated Zondacrypto for customers across much of Europe, was declared bankrupt by Harju County Court in Estonia on Aug. 27.
- The ruling took effect immediately and Margus Lentsius, an Estonian attorney, was appointed bankruptcy trustee, Poland's Ministry of Justice said.
Lentsius subsequently told Estonian business newspaper Äripäev that interest from Polish creditors had been "extremely, extremely large" and estimated that total claims could exceed €700 million, according to reports carried by Poland's Puls Biznesu and Money.pl.
Creditors now have two months
Poland's Ministry of Justice issued a Sunday notice directing creditors to file their claims directly with Lentsius within two months of the Aug. 27 bankruptcy announcement.
Claims submitted after the deadline can still be recognized, but would be satisfied only after timely claims, the ministry said. The first creditors' meeting is scheduled for Sept. 17 in Tallinn.
The Polish government's intervention reflects where the bankruptcy is actually being handled. Although Zondacrypto was closely associated with Poland and Reuters previously described it as the country's largest crypto exchange, BB Trade was incorporated and licensed in Estonia.
- Estonia's Financial Intelligence Unit, the country's anti-money-laundering supervisor, partially suspended BB Trade's crypto license in May and barred it from accepting additional customer funds or opening new accounts.
- It revoked the license altogether on June 29 after saying the company failed to respond to a supervisory order and bring its operations back into compliance.
Bankruptcy runs alongside a criminal investigation
The Estonian bankruptcy is separate from a sprawling criminal investigation underway in Poland.
Polish prosecutors opened an investigation in April into suspected fraud involving customers' fiat money and crypto, as well as potential money laundering.
At the time, prosecutors estimated losses at no less than 350 million zlotys (roughly $96 million at the time). The allegations remain under investigation and aren't findings of guilt.
By June, prosecutors said they had received more than 3,600 criminal complaints, interviewed nearly 1,000 alleged victims and seized more than 250 terabytes of files from Zondacrypto production servers.
Polish and Estonian authorities also established a joint investigation team.
Waldemar Żurek, Poland's justice minister and prosecutor general, said last week that investigators had merged the Zondacrypto case with an older organized crime and corruption investigation examining BitBay, the exchange's former name, and circumstances surrounding the disappearance of its founder, Sylwester Suszek.
Prosecutors have stressed that several strands remain under investigation and have declined to disclose the identities of all suspects or the charges against them.
For former customers, the more immediate issue is the bankruptcy process since filing a criminal complaint in Poland doesn't automatically register a creditor in Estonia, so the €700 million estimate says nothing yet about how much money the bankruptcy estate actually contains.
That gap will determine how much Zondacrypto customers eventually get back.