What was initially presented as a great deal quickly unraveled. On Friday, May 30, Czech Justice Minister Pavel Blazek, a conservative politician, resigned after two days of controversy over the sale by his ministry of bitcoins “donated for free” by a criminal convicted of drug trafficking.

The scandal began with a tweet from the ministry, which boasted on X on Wednesday that it auctioned off nearly 500 bitcoins two days earlier, raising close to 1 billion Czech koruna (about €40 million). According to Blazek, the money was meant to help fund the digitization of the justice system, fight drug use in prisons and provide housing for prison staff.

But a major problem was quickly pointed out by Denik N. On Thursday, the news site revealed that the bitcoins were donated by Tomas Jirikovsky, a notorious criminal convicted in 2017 of “embezzlement, drug trafficking and illegal possession of weapons.” He was found guilty of running Sheep Marketplace, a marketplace on the dark web known for dealing illegal products.

Since being released from prison in 2021, Jirikovsky had been trying to recover the roughly 1,500 bitcoins (worth €140 million at current rates) that police seized upon his incarceration. During his trial, the court suspected the money originated from Nucleus, another notorious dark web marketplace that was abruptly shut down the day after his arrest. However, the defendant claimed he had obtained the bitcoins legally, which allowed him to keep them.

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