On 15 September 2026, Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office (Prokuratura Krajowa) published a public notice to victims in connection with the insolvency of the operator of the ZondaCrypto cryptocurrency exchange. The notice follows a decision by the Harju County Court in the Estonian capital Tallinn to declare the Estonian company BB Trade Estonia OÜ — the legal operator of the ZondaCrypto trading platform — insolvent on 27 August 2026.
According to prosecutors, Estonian insolvency trustee Margus Lentsius, of the law firm Advokaadibüroo Lentsius & CASUS in Tallinn, has been appointed for the proceedings. Victims wishing to assert claims relating to assets held on the platform must file them directly with the trustee, either in person or through a lawyer. According to the information available, the deadline for doing so is 27 October 2026. Prosecutors explicitly stated in their notice that filing a criminal complaint with the Polish prosecutor’s office and obtaining victim status in the criminal proceedings does not replace the separate filing of a claim with the Estonian trustee — a point likely to be of central practical importance for many of those affected, given the dual structure of a criminal investigation in Poland running alongside civil insolvency proceedings in Estonia.
The exchange operator’s insolvency is linked to a criminal investigation already opened earlier by the Polish National Prosecutor’s Office. As early as 5 September 2026, the Silesian Regional Department for Organized Crime and Corruption of the National Prosecutor’s Office in Katowice had arrested a suspect referred to in official communications as “Roman Ż.” On 7 September 2026, prosecutors brought two separate charges against him: participation in an organized criminal group that allegedly caused damage of at least 7.8 million złoty through computer fraud, and the embezzlement of user funds in the same amount through the unauthorized alteration of the trading platform’s data systems.
According to prosecutors, the suspect allegedly altered, deleted and inserted data records within the exchange’s IT systems and influenced the automated processing, collection and transmission of user data. At the prosecutor’s request, the District Court in Katowice ordered pretrial detention for Roman Ż. on 8 September 2026; the prosecutor’s office cited, alongside the maximum sentence of up to ten years’ imprisonment, the risk of obstruction of the investigation and flight risk as grounds. The suspect denies the allegations against him.
The notice of the operator’s insolvency, published on 15 September 2026, marks a new phase in the handling of the ZondaCrypto case, which now takes on an insolvency-law dimension alongside the criminal one. For the many Polish users of the trading platform who held cryptocurrencies or fiat-currency balances there, the question now arises as to what extent their claims can still be satisfied at all within the framework of the Estonian insolvency proceedings — proceedings governed by Estonian law, since BB Trade Estonia OÜ is registered as an Estonian limited company.
The case’s cross-border structure — a cryptocurrency offering marketed in Poland under the ZondaCrypto brand but legally operated through an Estonian company, while the criminal investigation into suspected computer fraud is being conducted in Poland — illustrates the challenges European law-enforcement and supervisory authorities face in dealing with cross-border cryptocurrency platforms. Estonian jurisdiction over the insolvency proceedings and Polish jurisdiction over the criminal investigation run in parallel, without any direct legal link between the two — meaning victims must navigate two different legal systems, each with its own deadlines and procedural rules.
Poland’s Prosecutor General, Waldemar Żurek, had already publicly alerted those affected to the upcoming deadline for filing claims in Estonia, explicitly pointing to the need to contact the Estonian authorities or the appointed insolvency trustee directly. Authorities have not given final figures, in the statements published so far, on the exact number of affected users or the total value of assets held on the platform that may now be at risk.
The investigation into Roman Ż. and possible further participants in the organized group he is alleged to have belonged to continues, according to prosecutors. It remains to be seen whether additional suspects are identified as the investigation proceeds further, and to what extent the actual total damage to platform users will increase once the full claims-filing process in the Estonian insolvency proceedings has been completed.
