Poles laundering billions of drugs on cryptocurrency exchanges

The fourth person responsible for large-scale money laundering has just been arrested. He is a Pole cooperating with the Panama cartel, called "Shadow bank". The suspect was caught in Amsterdam, where he is waiting for transport to Poland.

The case is handled by the National Public Prosecutor's Office because its scope is huge. According to investigators, the group is behind the disposal of as much as PLN 1,4 billion from international drug trafficking. The detention in the Netherlands is therefore not surprising. The group also dealt with the so-called phishing, i.e. extorting data on the Internet, especially passwords to bank accounts, thanks to which hundreds of people were robbed. The group's drug trade alone is estimated at PLN 3,4 billion.

Crypto Capital Corporation - a façade company of criminals

Although the National Prosecutor's Office does not provide details of the detention or the investigation itself, the amount alone is enough to link them to the high-profile case of Crypto Capital Corporation. It is a Panama-based "shadow bank" that operates cryptocurrency exchanges and Mexican cartels. He was also active in Poland, where he founded a company, which - as it turned out later - deposited a staggering amount of USD 350 million, i.e. approximately PLN 1,4 billion, in a small cooperative bank in Skierniewice. 

Investigators from the Polish prosecutor's office, the Central Bureau of Investigation of the Police, as well as Interpol, Europol and American services (including the DEA dealing with drug crime) followed in the footsteps of the money. Thanks to this, Crypto Capital funds were seized. Some of them rested on the stock exchange accounts Bitfinex, which lost USD 880 million through cooperation with an apparently legally operating operator from Panama.

Cryptocurrency market Bitfinex therefore needed to quickly replenish capital by borrowing from Tetherbut then it had… the same owners. The New York State Attorney General's Office even stated that there is no doubt that iFinex (the owner of Tether Ltd and the Bitfinex exchange) defrauded its clients' money in this way. The prosecution claims that the company decided to use the financial reserves of Tether Ltd, which were to be only to secure the issued tokens, the number of which is assumed to correspond to the number of dollars deposited. A "loan" to Bitfinex would amount to a breach of reserves, which is against US law, as would such transactions between companies owned by the same entity.

So we had to find our own resources not to violate the reserve in Tether (USDT), but it did not even succeed in the legal field, because the fight for USD 880 million was backfired by lawyers who sent the wrong application to a Georgian court ...

There is also no way to count that the seized amount will be quickly unfrozen. The National Public Prosecutor's Office leaves no illusions about this in the last communication, in which we read, inter alia:

"It should be recalled that at the end of August (August 29, 2019) the prosecutor issued a decision on securing property by seizing over PLN 1,4 billion in US dollars, British pounds, Euro and zlotys. This money, as derived from crime, is subject to obligatory forfeiture to the Treasury " - writes the National Prosecutor's Office.

What's next for the secret laundry?

Apart from the seizure of millions of dollars, four people have already been arrested in the case. However, five men are among the suspects: two Poles and three foreigners. Among them was Ivan Molina Lee, the second group leader to be arrested last year. Prosecutors do not hide that further arrests will be carried out in the near future, and there may not be an end to five suspects.