Unconfirmed. Around €400 million has apparently been seized from a Bitfinex account held with a small bank in Poland, the Cooperative Bank in Skierniewice.
A well read tech focused Polish website says: “Our unofficial information shows that it is about Bitfinex. The Polish prosecutor’s office has not raised any charges yet, and due to the international dimension of the case, the Central Investigation Office cooperates with Europol and Interpol.”
There are reports about a week ago some Bitfinex users were interrogated by Polish police. One of them says:
“I testified as a witness regarding the case of Crypto sp z o.o because they sent me money from Bitfinex and their accounts were blocked.”
SP Z.O.O means limited company. With Crypto SP being the company name of the bank account Bitfinex used.
Today it was revealed there’s apparently some connection between that company, or its parent company Crypto Capital Corp, and Colombian drug cartels.
The Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was apparently scammed out of €400,000 by contractors while building the Belgian Embassy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This led to an investigation which showed that “the account used by the fraudsters belongs to the company M. registered in the vicinity of Pruszków. According to tvp.info, its president is a Canadian Panamanian descent.
While checking the connections of this company, investigators came across another company – C. At its head stood a man with citizenship of Colombia and Panama. This, in turn, the company was associated with a large online cantor exchange of cryptocurrencies. Both companies had over PLN 270 million deposited on their accounts.”
Polish media further reports: “We already know that they created a much larger chain of related companies. The scale of financial operations indicates that these bills were to hide money from smuggling cocaine to Europe.The companies were also used for large scale scams. Criminals have hidden their operations, also exchanging money for cryptocurrencies, obliterating traces…
Investigators determined that both companies did not actually carry out any economic activity. They were created solely to share your bank accounts with international criminal financial operations. – The taking of money from these accounts was possible thanks to the amendment of the March 22, 2017 amendment to the Act on Counteracting Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing – explained Deputy Prosecutor General Beata Marczak.”
It’s unclear at this stage what exactly is going on here. It appears Bitfinex’s bank account was a shared account of sorts, or perhaps, and maybe more likely, these drug operators and scammers deposited fiat in Bitfinex’s bank account and then converted it to crypto.
Much of the information however is coming from roughly translated reporting by Polish media where the story appears to be in development and therefore few facts remain certain.
Except that €400 million has been seized from the tiny Polish bank Bitfinex uses and there are suggestions that it might be from Bitfinex’s account itself.
