Polish Olympic chief detained in Zondacrypto bribery probe

Polish prosecutors on Thursday detained Radosław Piesiewicz, the head of the Polish Olympic Committee (PKOl), in a bribery probe into failed crypto exchange Zondacrypto. Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek confirmed the detention.

The case centers on a €40,000 Patek Philippe watch which the sports official is accused of taking from the exchange’s boss.

The gifts were allegedly meant to buy lobbying at UOKiK

Żurek, who is also Poland’s prosecutor general, wrote on X that Radosław P. was detained within the framework of the Zondacrypto inquiry. More details will come after the procedural steps at the National Prosecutor’s Office Silesian Department have been finished.

Later in the day he spoke to reporters and confirmed Piesiewicz would be charged, but would not say what the charges were.

The broader inquiry, he said, involved suspected large-scale fraud and other crimes related to the company’s money.

Piesiewicz stands accused of taking bribes for favorable treatment of the exchange’s sponsorship deals. He was allegedly given the gifts so he would lobby UOKiK, Poland’s consumer protection watchdog, on Zondacrypto’s behalf.

The luxury watch has now come to light, with a joint investigation published on August 24 alleging that the former head of Zondacrypto, Przemysław Kral, gave Piesiewicz the Patek Philippe, as well as other gifts.

Piesiewicz denies the accusation. He says he paid for the watch out of his own pocket and that Kral only assisted him in making the purchase.

Prosecutors are probing the watch as a line of inquiry, not as a settled fact.

Żurek on Wednesday named Piesiewicz and PKOl as part of a list of people and groups being investigated over financing they received from the exchange.

Zondacrypto sponsored the Winter Olympics team, then stopped paying

Under Piesiewicz, PKOl signed a 2025 deal that made the exchange the main sponsor of Poland’s team at this year’s Winter Olympics in Italy. Some of the alleged deal provided cryptocurrency awards to February’s medalists.

Those bonuses never arrived after the company collapsed.

The exchange ceased to honor withdrawals in April as a liquidity crisis hit, and then it crumbled with Kral taking flight abroad.

The losses sustained by clients total at least 350 million zloty, or about €81.4 million.

Cryptopolitan also reported that prosecutors estimated around 30,000 users may have lost over $95 million and that Kral had confessed the platform was unable to access a wallet containing 4,500 BTC.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has accused Zondacrypto of funneling money to opposition figures to sabotage his government’s crypto legislation, which has been vetoed by President Karol Nawrocki.

Tusk wrote Wednesday that the resistance to the bill was due to a pattern of “cash for watches worth €40,000 euros,” media funding, and payments to right-wing foundations.

Earlier this year, Cryptopolitan reported that Tusk also claimed the firm was linked to Russian organized crime and security services, and Monaco opened a money-laundering case of its own.

In May, 82 of the 106 members of PKOl voted for a motion to dismiss him, a meeting he has refused to call so far.

Piesiewicz “should never have been the president of the PKOl” and had “disgraced Polish Olympism,” sport minister Jakub Rutnicki said in a post on X.