Estonian trustee of the bankrupt Zondacrypto operator, Margus Lentsius, does not say how much money exchange clients may recover. He promises to establish the number of creditors and the value of claims only in the coming weeks, and after 27 October he is still verifying thousands of submissions.
As TVN24 reports, the trustee is examining claims, calling on creditors to supplement missing information, and preparing a preliminary list of creditors. In parallel, he is searching for the assets of BB Trade Estonia OÜ, the company that ran the Zondacrypto exchange. The Harju County Court in Tallinn declared its bankruptcy on 27 August and appointed Lentsius as trustee.
What the Trustee Says
According to TVN24’s report, Lentsius said that the vast majority of claims reviewed so far come from Polish citizens or Polish companies. An answer on the number of creditors and the total value of claims is to be possible in the coming weeks. Only in November will it become clear how many of the emails received are duplicates or general inquiries, and how many actually represent creditors.
Business Insider writes about thousands of emails, incomplete submissions, and the unresolved question of financing the proceedings. According to that portal, the preparation of the creditor list will have to wait.
Scale of Claims
As recently as 22 October, the chair of the creditors’ committee, Damian Przybyłowski, told PAP about approximately 5,000 submissions. As Interia reports, citing money.pl, by the last day of the deadline around 5,000 people had filed claims for about EUR 40–43 million. Previously, the company’s potential liabilities were estimated at over EUR 700 million. This means that, based on current data, considerably fewer claims were filed than the estimates suggested.
Przybyłowski also reported that around 1,350 applications contained formal errors, and some creditors did not respond to calls for corrections. These figures come from media reports and may change after the trustee’s verification.
What It Means for Clients
The trustee will distribute the assets of the bankrupt company only among those who filed claims. The deadline expired on Tuesday, 27 October. According to the creditors’ committee, late submissions remain in the queue for satisfaction. Estonian law allows applying for restoration of the deadline, but only for a valid reason and until the trustee submits the list of creditors to the court (according to Forsal.pl).
Filing a claim with the trustee is a separate procedure from notifying the Polish prosecutor’s office. The notification alone does not place someone on the list of creditors. Anyone who received a request from the trustee to supplement missing information should respond as soon as possible, because inclusion of the claim on the preliminary list depends on it.
Clients may also have tax obligations. The Ministry of Finance indicated that selling crypto for zlotys, dollars or euros is income even without withdrawals, and the tax is 19 percent and is settled on the PIT-38 form.
The trustee did not say how much of the company’s assets have been identified so far or when the court will approve the final list of creditors. There is also no confirmed forecast of what share of claims will be satisfied.
