A Polish Crypto Rescue Priced on Orbán Staying in Power

A Polish investigation into the collapsed Zondacrypto exchange shows how access to Viktor Orbán’s circle was sold as a service, priced against the Hungarian election calendar and delivered to nobody.

For nine months a retired Polish anti-corruption officer billed the head of a crypto exchange 15,000 euros a month. Part of what he sold was Hungary. He told his client that Orbán’s people would buy the exchange, pointed him towards the chairman of Hungary’s largest bank and made the deal conditional on Fidesz surviving the vote of 12 April 2026. Fidesz did not survive, the money never came and the bank says it never heard of any of it.

Reporters from TVN24 and Wirtualna Polska published on 9 September 2026 the latest instalment of a joint investigation into the affair around Zondacrypto, the Polish cryptocurrency exchange that collapsed in spring 2026. The subject is Artur Chodziński, a former officer of the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA), the Polish agency created in 2006 under the Law and Justice (PiS) government of the day.

According to the investigation, Chodziński’s consultancy Astrea Consulting issued its first invoice to Expofer Servis House s.r.o., a Czech company belonging to Zondacrypto chief executive Przemysław Kral, on 30 June 2025 for seven thousand euros. Monthly invoices of 15,000 euros followed until 31 March 2026, totalling 135,000 euros, or more than half a million zloty. Kral now faces prosecution charges over participation in fraud of significant value and is cooperating with investigators.