In short
- A Czech Minister of Justice resigned last week after accepting a Bitcoin donation of $ 45 million from a convicted drug trafficking.
- The opposition Ano party has called for a vote without trust in the government, with reference to failure to check the funds.
- The scandal comes months before the national elections, with polls that show that Ano is leading the prevailing coalition.
The Czech opposition party Ano On Tuesday called for a vote without trust in the government after the resignation of Minister of Justice Pavel Blazek, amidst controversy about a Bitcoin donation of a convicted drug trafficking.
Reportedly, the donation, reportedly worth millions of dollars to Bitcoin, has been made to the Czech government in March and has caused widespread conviction. Decrypt has contacted government officials for comment.
Blazek decreased on Friday after being confronted with political recoil of an alleged Bitcoin donation of Tomas Jirikovsky, who was convicted in 2017 for running Sheep Marketplace, a defined dark web platform that apparently was involved in drug trafficking.
The donations in Bitcoin were sold for more than $ 45 million on one public auction.
The minister denied legal misconduct with his acceptance of the donation of Jirikovsky before he resigned.
“This government should have taken away immediately,” said Karel Havlicek, deputy head of the populist ANO party, on Czech national television, by A report by Reuters.
A vote without trust is a formal process in which members of parliament decide whether they still support the government or her leader.
Dark Web Bitcoin Trail
During a press conference a day before he resigned, Blazek said he “had no way to investigate the case” and was not “interested in so many years after the case”, as quoted in one report by Le Monde.
Blazek referred to the arrest of Jirikovsky in March 2016 and conviction in 2017. After his release in 2021, Jirikovsky tried to restore 1500 BTC that had been seized by the authorities.
Jirikovsky’s own platform, Sheep Marketplace, was closed after a robbery in 2013 was bound to two men in Florida, in which the lost 5,400 BTC.
Details of the Donated Bitcoin’s Dark Web Trail were revealed for the first time in a research report Of the Czech exhaust Deník n.
During his trial, the authorities assessed the origin of the confiscated bitcoin. Czech media speculated at the time about ties with other dark web markets, although no formal link to the core marketplace – a separate platform was closed in 2016 – once established.
In a separate event in March, a long -floating wallet associated with core after almost a decade of inactivity brought about $ 77 million to Bitcoin.
The main portel still has around $ 406 million in Bitcoin, according to facts Followed by Arkham Intelligence.
Slender majority in danger
Blazek’s departure comes together as the government (Spolu) coalition, which includes ODS, lags behind the opposition at 19% to ANOs 32%, according to Poll -DataWith the elections of the country planned for October.
Blazek served as a veteran high official in the center -right Civic Democratic Party (ODS) of Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, according to the government records.
“Many people will probably see Fiala as someone who is at least one suspect in all this,” Jiří Pehe, director of the New York University Prague, told Czech media platform Radio Prague.
“They will not believe that, as a good friend and employee of Blažek, he did not know about the entire affair,” Pehe added.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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