Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday in the Polish parliament that a cryptocurrency firm built with “Russian money” had sponsored Polish politicians from the former national-conservative government as well as a CPAC event in Poland last year, where Kristi Noem, the former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary, openly backed nationalist Karol Nawrocki to win the Polish presidency. The accusation landed in the middle of a parliamentary vote to overrule Nawrocki, who had rejected regulations of the Polish crypto-asset market, turning a fight over market rules into another display of political and corporate influence being argued over at the top.
Who Gets Backed, Who Gets Blocked
Tusk was speaking before a parliamentary vote to overrule Nawrocki, who had vetoed two separate attempts by the liberal government to regulate this market in the past six months. The government says the new regulations are meant to bring Poland in compliance with European Union rules on crypto-assets. Nawrocki’s vetoes kept the market outside those rules, while the political class traded accusations about who was really being served.
Tusk claimed that the blocking of regulations by some Polish politicians indicated they were serving the interests of a specific company, Zondacrypto, which had in the past provided them with financial support and which had links with Russia. Tusk said, “The source of this company’s financial success is not only Russian money linked to the so-called Bratva, one of the most important mafia groups in Russia, but also to Russian secret services.” He also said Zondacrypto “sponsors political and social events in Poland and promotes very specific political forces,” including by financing politicians of the formerly governing Law and Justice as well as of the far-right Confederation.
The claim is Tusk’s assertion as reported by AP News, and the provided material does not include independent verification. Still, the shape of the story is plain enough: a crypto firm, political sponsorship, and a market whose rules are being fought over by parties and presidential power while ordinary people are left to watch the machinery grind.
The Event, the Money, the Message
Tusk said Zondacrypto had been a strategic sponsor of a meeting of The Conservative Political Action Conference, the United States’ premier conservative gathering, in Rzeszow, eastern Poland, in March 2025. That meeting took place just five days before presidential elections in Poland, which were a tight confrontation between a candidate of Tusk’s liberal camp and Nawrocki, backed by Law and Justice. During that meeting, Kristi Noem, then the U.S. homeland secretary, described the liberal candidate as “an absolute train wreck of a leader” and Nawrocki, who was attending the CPAC meeting, as someone who would lead Poland in a style similar to Trump. Noem said, “We need you to elect the right leader,” and, “You will be the leaders that will turn Europe back to conservative values.”
That event, sponsored by a crypto firm Tusk says was tied to Russian money, shows how political theater, foreign influence, and corporate sponsorship can all pile into the same room and call it democracy. The public gets speeches about values; the power brokers get access, branding, and leverage.
What the Officials Say
Tusk also said that, when deciding to veto the new crypto regulations, Nawrocki was “fully aware” of all the details concerning Zondacrypto. In response to Tusk’s accusations, Zbigniew Bogucki, the head of the president’s office, said Nawrocki was not opposed to the need to regulate the crypto-assets market but just to the “flawed regulatory model” proposed by the government. Confederation leader Sławomir Mentzen said the new legislation would have “destroyed the Polish cryptocurrency market.”
Zondacrypto did not reply to questions from AP about Tusk’s accusations but it told Polish media earlier this week it was cooperating with Polish authorities investigating accusations against it. That is where the official record stops: accusations from the prime minister, denials and counterclaims from the president’s office and party leaders, and a market still being managed through elite bargaining rather than anything resembling public control.
The whole dispute is framed as regulation, compliance, and market protection, but the facts in the record show a deeper hierarchy at work: politicians, party machines, foreign-linked money, and a crypto firm all circling the same levers of influence while the public is told to trust whichever faction claims to be cleaning up the mess.