On Thursday, Tobias Niemiro, a Polish businessman and co-owner of Bitmarket, a cryptocurrency exchange that closed under mysterious circumstances, was found with a bullet wound to the head in the forest near his hometown of Olsztyn. The police are investigating, and the circumstances of the death are not conclusively confirmed, Decrypt writes with reference to the local media.
The large Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza suggests that Niyomiro may have committed suicide. The deceased's acquaintances do not share this version.
A local businessman, Adam Socha, published a blog post today where he said he had received an e-mail from Niyomiro a few hours before his death.
"The letter was long. He seems to have been surrounded by dubious businessmen. He gave their names. I will not disclose this information because of an ongoing investigation. I forwarded the letter to the prosecutor's office. He also wrote that he would provide certain materials, but did not have time to do so," Socha said.
On July 8, Bitmarket closed down, citing a "loss of liquidity". More than 400 investors say they cannot withdraw 2,300 bitcoins (about $23 million) from the platform, Gazeta Wyborcza writes.
In a separate statement issued after the closure of Bitmarket, Niyomiro and his business partner Marcin Ashkelovich rejected the accusations of embezzlement of client funds.
In a conversation with the Polish website Money.pl, Niyomiro said that he was not involved in the management of assets on the stock exchange and suffered losses himself. I lost everything because somebody crashed the stock exchange," he said. - Now I'm losing the face and name I've been working on all my life. I am one of the victims.
Bitmarket was the second largest cryptocurrency exchange in Poland. The platform was founded in 2014 by Mihal Pleban and sold to Niyemiro and Ashkelovich a year later. The new owners of Bitmarket announced that they had received a stock exchange with a deficit of 600 bitcoins due to "management mistakes" of the previous management.
In January 2015, the stock exchange temporarily suspended operations, as expected, due to a debt to the bank. Pleban said the problem was not that, but a fraudulent transaction. He also denied Niyemiro and Ashkelovich's version of the events surrounding the sale of Bitmarket, saying that they could not cover the entire amount of the transaction and agreed to write off the bitcoins from her wallets.
Gazeta Wyborcza suggests that the partners hoped to compensate for the missing bitcoins over time, but found themselves in a difficult position because of the rapid rise in the price of the cryptocurrency.
Currently, law enforcement agencies are studying the available materials and trying to identify ways to move funds from the wallets of the exchange. At the request of former Bitmarket users, a criminal case was opened against Niyemiro and Ashkelovich. Pre-trial proceedings are under way in which, under Polish law, the prosecution may freeze relevant bank accounts and seize assets.