Four years ago, a cryptocurrency mogul mysteriously disappeared. Now, his successor is also missing.

Written by: Andrew Higgins

Translation: Chopper, Foresight News

In 2022, a Polish woman's phone received a voice message full of despair. The caller was her brother Sylwester Suszek—the founder of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Central and Eastern Europe. Two weeks earlier, he had vanished from a fuel depot housing helicopters in southwestern Poland.

“If you don’t help me, we will never see each other again.” He pleaded with his sister to transfer Bitcoin in exchange for his personal freedom. Since then, no one has heard from Suszek, and his family fears he is likely dead.

Nicole Suszek holds her phone, with a missing person notice for her brother Sylwester Suszek on the screen

This almost forgotten mystery has resurfaced. In April of this year, the Polish lawyer who succeeded Suszek in leading the Zondacrypto exchange also vanished without a trace.

“It is already outrageous for one cryptocurrency tycoon to go missing, but for two to vanish within four years is simply unfathomable,” said Warsaw lawyer Robert Nogacki, who represents a large number of Zondacrypto users whose accounts are frozen and cannot withdraw funds. “Everything about this company is illogical.”

With support from Trump, the global cryptocurrency industry has made significant strides toward mainstream acceptance in recent years. However, the industry still struggles to shake off the stains left by multiple major collapses; it remains infamous, viewed as a breeding ground for fraudsters and criminals.

The bizarre turmoil surrounding Zondacrypto aptly explains this situation. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has publicly accused the opposition of benefiting from Russian cryptocurrency funds.

In April of this year, Zondacrypto's official website went completely offline, leaving hundreds of thousands of customers unable to withdraw or trade on the cryptocurrency platform. The token issued by the exchange, ZND, plummeted in value by more than 99.9%.

Przemyslaw Kral, who took over as CEO after Suszek, last appeared on April 16. He posted on social media, pleading with concerned customers not to lose faith. He promised users that with Zondacrypto holding Bitcoin worth over $330 million, everyone would eventually get their money back.

But Kral admitted that accessing this asset would take time. He stated that the digital keys to unlock the vast online vault of this asset are held by just one person—the former boss Suszek, who went missing in 2022.

“Please give me a little more time,” Kral desperately begged the customers.

From miner's son to "King of Crypto"

Zondacrypto's predecessor, BitBay, was founded in 2014, starting in the coal-industry city of Katowice, Poland, which was undergoing economic transformation at that time.

Katowice, Poland, is the birthplace of Zondacrypto

BitBay's founder Suszek was the son of a miner. Polish media extensively covered his rags-to-riches story, hailing him as the "King of Crypto."

Suszek was often on the move: one side being his modest family home in Katowice, and the other a luxury apartment in a futuristic 52-story skyscraper in Warsaw. He personally piloted helicopters between the two cities, owning several luxury cars, including multiple Porsches and a Ferrari.

“He was flamboyant and loved to show off his success,” recalled Polish journalist Karolina Wysota, who interviewed him at his Warsaw apartment before his disappearance. She added, “He was a strong believer in cryptocurrency and told me he had been hoarding Bitcoin to leave to his children.”

In 2018, the Polish version of Forbes described Suszek as “a living example of someone who rapidly accumulated millions in wealth through virtual currency.

But in the same year, Polish regulators began to question the company's business practices, prompting Suszek to search for a new base of operations. He first tried Malta, then turned to Estonia. At the time, Estonia was actively promoting itself as "E-stonia," striving to take the lead in the digital economy.

In October 2020, he registered the company as BB Trade Estonia; hundreds of cryptocurrency firms flooded into this Baltic state around that time.

However, the good times did not last long.

Opening for business (next door is a nail salon)

In 2022, Estonian authorities began to reassess the country’s position as a center for the crypto industry.

That year, the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit, which oversees virtual asset companies, released a report indicating that local firms openly disregarded anti-money laundering regulations. The agency stated that nearly three-quarters of related companies “had not reported a single suspicious transaction” in 2021. Given that these platforms handled transaction amounts in the billions and that cryptocurrencies are often used for money laundering and tax evasion, this phenomenon raised significant concerns.

Suszek’s BitBay had by then rebranded as Zondacrypto, and its parent company BB Trade had also never reported any suspicious transactions. The company’s office was located in a dilapidated commercial area on the outskirts of Estonia’s capital Tallinn, in a small office on the second floor above a kitchenware store, right next door to a nail salon.

Journalists recently visited the building and found Zondacrypto’s mailbox stuffed with months' worth of accumulated letters. Employees of the nail salon stated they had never seen anyone enter that office. Yet nominally, it was the operation center of a company claiming to have 1.3 million customers (most from Poland) and holding hundreds of millions in assets.

Just before and after the exchange moved its registered entity to Estonia, Suszek’s sister, Nicole Suszek, noticed a significant change in her brother's temperament.

Nicole Suszek

She said Suszek was originally cheerful and optimistic but became increasingly anxious, constantly worrying about his safety. The catalyst incident occurred in Katowice when someone smashed the windshield of his blue Ferrari with an axe and embedded the axe into the side of the car.

Suszek told his sister that the attacker was his former business partner in the crypto field, who was also a godfather to one of his children. Suszek suspected this person colluded with local criminal gangs in Katowice.

After the axe attack, he briefly moved his family to Zurich. However, his wife could not adapt to life there, and the family quickly returned to Poland.

In March 2022, Suszek vanished.

The gas station where Suszek disappeared

He regularly used two mobile phones, and the last signal from both phones was traced to a fuel depot gas station in the small town of Chorzów near Katowice. Police investigations revealed he was driving a Porsche Taycan to meet a close friend and business partner, Marian Wszolek (nicknamed "Maniek"), who operated the fuel depot.

Last year, Polish prosecutors indicted Wszolek, accusing him of involvement in an organized crime group, large-scale VAT fraud, and money laundering. Additionally, in connection to Suszek’s disappearance, he was charged with “illegal deprivation of another's personal freedom.”

After being indicted, Wszolek also vanished.

It is said that in the last batch of messages sent by Suszek in 2022, one email to his sister stated: “Their means of treating me are getting worse; now they are threatening to chop off my fingers.” The email also mentioned: “They only want to get back what I owe them.”

There was another message suspected to be from the kidnappers, describing Suszek as “crying like a little child.” Another warning stated that if the family did not pay the ransom, they would “live in fear for the rest of their lives,” along with the caution that “time is running out.”

Nicole Suszek was deeply disappointed by the sluggish attitude of the police regarding the investigation into her brother’s disappearance. She even consulted a Polish medium, hoping to find her brother or at least locate his body. The medium told her that Suszek's body was dumped in a mine shaft of an abandoned coal mine, miles away from the fuel depot. But to this day, the body has not been found.

Customers in Panic

Shortly after Suszek’s disappearance, his lawyer and trusted deputy Kral took over the company’s business and resides in Monaco. Although Estonian auditing agencies questioned the authenticity of the assets claimed by the exchange in its 2023 and 2024 reports, Kral still aggressively invested in marketing.

Zondacrypto was financially affluent, sponsoring mainstream football clubs in Poland, Italy, and Estonia, as well as the Polish Olympic Committee, and funding several foundations associated with Polish politicians (especially nationalist and liberal factions).

The sign of the former Zondacrypto Arena still hangs in a stadium in Czestochowa, Poland

Through a Polish right-wing television station, the exchange also provided some funding for the conservative political action conference held in Poland last year, which is closely connected to the American organization and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

In December 2022, Polish users began to openly complain about delays in their withdrawals, while Kral remained calm.

In January of the following year, he appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the exchange sponsored a local ice hockey team; during the forum, he boasted that cryptocurrency was “becoming more mainstream.”

By spring, complaints from users intensified. Kral claimed that the delays in withdrawals were due to system upgrades on the exchange’s website and assured customers that funds would be processed within days. However, the deadlines kept getting pushed back, and whenever reporters questioned his statements, Kral would issue threats.

Investigative journalist Szymon Jadczak from the prominent Polish media outlet "Virtual Poland" had been digging deep into the chaos at Zondacrypto. He recalled receiving messages from Kral, who somehow knew about the journalist's private medical history, including a past brain hemorrhage. “He warned me to be careful,” Jadczak said during an interview in Warsaw.

In April of this year, the exchange completely froze all withdrawal functions, transitioning users' worries into full-blown panic.

To prevent a run on the exchanges, Kral reassured customers not to panic. He claimed Zondacrypto reserved 4,500 Bitcoins, asserting that the keys were held by the missing former head, Suszek, and accessing the assets would take time.

Experts in the cryptocurrency industry immediately noticed discrepancies in Kral's statements: the encrypted wallet where the company’s Bitcoins were supposedly stored had not seen any transaction records for nearly a decade.

Two months after Zondacrypto's website shut down, on June 29, the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit revoked its parent company's operating license.

Both the Polish parliament and the media are hotly debating the true nature of Zondacrypto: is it merely a legitimate business that collapsed due to failed investments in cryptocurrency, or is it a criminal organization designed for money laundering since its inception? Since last October, Bitcoin prices have halved. The prosecutor's office in Katowice has formally launched an investigation into Zondacrypto.

Perhaps the only person who can reveal the entire truth is Kral, but he has been missing for four consecutive months.

Rumors abound, with unverified reports claiming sightings of him in Israel, Botswana, and Dubai. Lawyer Nogacki, representing the victimized users, speculates that Kral is likely hiding in Southeast Asia. But regarding Zondacrypto, there is one thing he is absolutely certain of: “From day one, this company has been a scam.”