WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said a cryptocurrency firm built with “Russian money” had sponsored Polish politicians from the former national-conservative government as well as a CPAC ( Conservative Political Action Conference ) 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.
Tusk was speaking on Friday in the Polish parliament, before a parliamentary vote to overrule Nawrocki who had rejected regulations of the Polish crypto-asset market. Nawrocki has vetoed two separate attempts by the liberal government to regulate this market in the past six months.
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.
“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,” Tusk said in his parliament speech.
Tusk said Zondacrypto at the same time “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.
Tusk also said that 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.
“We need you to elect the right leader,” Noem, a prominent Trump ally, said in a speech at the event. “You will be the leaders that will turn Europe back to conservative values.”
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."
The government says the new regulations are meant to bring Poland in compliance with European Union rules on crypto-assets.
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.
FILE - Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk speaks with the media as he arrives for the EU Summit in Brussels, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert, file)
LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday resisted demands he resign over revelations that his scandal-tainted pick for U.K. ambassador to Washington was appointed despite failing security checks.
Starmer says he was not informed that the Foreign Office had overruled the recommendation of security officials in early 2025 not to give Peter Mandelson the job. Many considered Mandelson a risky appointment because of his past friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Starmer said he was “absolutely furious” that he had been kept in the dark, calling it staggering” and “unforgivable.” He said he would “set out all the relevant facts in true transparency” to Parliament on Monday.
The top Foreign Office civil servant, Olly Robbins, took the fall for the decision and resigned.
The prime minister's job has been endangered by his fateful decision to appoint Mandelson, a trade expert and elder statesman of the governing Labour Party, as envoy to the Trump administration. It was a calculated risk that backfired spectacularly, and could bring down the prime minister.
Opposition politicians expressed disbelief that Starmer could have been unaware Mandelson had failed security vetting. Starmer’s office said he only found out this week.
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, said Friday that “the recommendation was to not appoint Peter Mandelson to the role,” and that the Foreign Office ignored it. He said that was “astonishing,” but within the rules.
He said no government minister had been told of the security assessment.
Jones said the checks, carried out by a department known as U.K. Security Vetting, “go through financial, personal, sexual, religious and other types of background information, and that is why it is kept extremely private on a portal that only a few people have access to.”
Opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said claims the prime minister didn’t know were “completely preposterous.”
“This story does not stack up. The prime minister is taking us for fools,” she told the BBC. “All roads lead to a resignation.”
Ed Davey, the leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats, said Starmer “must go” if he misled Parliament and lied to the British public. The Lib Dems asked the prime minister's ethics adviser to investigate whether Starmer broke the government code of conduct by misleading Parliament.
Starmer has repeatedly insisted that “due process” was followed in the appointment, which was announced in December 2024. Mandelson took up the Washington post in February 2025, after undergoing security vetting.
Mandelson’s expertise as a former European Union trade chief was considered a major asset in trying to persuade the Trump administration not to slap heavy tariffs on British goods, and seemed to pay off when the countries struck a trade deal in May 2025.
But documents released by the government in March, after being forced to by Parliament, showed Starmer ignored red flags raised by his staff about the appointment. He was warned that Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019, exposed the government to “reputational risk.”
Starmer fired Mandelson in September 2025 after evidence emerged that he had lied about the extent of his links to Epstein.
The release of millions of pages of Epstein-related documents by the U.S. Department of Justice in January reveled more about the closeness of Mandelson’s relationship with the financier, even after Epstein’s conviction in 2008 for sexual offenses involving a minor.
Emails suggested Mandelson had passed on sensitive — and potentially market-moving — government information to Epstein in 2009, when he was a member of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government.
British police subsequently launched a criminal probe and searched Mandelson’s houses in London and western England. Mandelson was arrested on Feb. 23 on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
He has been released without bail conditions as the police investigation continues. Mandelson has previously denied wrongdoing and hasn’t been charged. He does not face allegations of sexual misconduct.
King Charles III’s brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, is also under police investigation over his friendship with Epstein. He, too, has been arrested but not charged.
The prime minister has apologized to the British public and to Epstein’s victims for believing what he has termed “Mandelson’s lies.”
The Mandelson revelations are among a string of setbacks Starmer has faced since he led the Labour Party to a landslide election victory in July 2024. He has struggled to deliver promised economic growth, repair tattered public services and ease the cost of living., and has been beset by missteps and U-turns.
The prime minister defused a potential crisis in February, when some Labour lawmakers called for him to resign over the Mandelson appointment. But he could face a leadership challenge after local and regional elections on May 7, in which Labour is expected to do badly.
Despite his struggles on the home front, Starmer has been praised for his work on the world stage. He has played a key role in maintaining European support for Ukraine, and was in Paris on Friday to host a summit alongside French President Emmanuel Macron on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the oil shipping route choked off by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks as Starmer hosts social media industry leaders to discuss child safety online Thursday, April 16, 2026, in London. (Leon Neal/Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - This March 28, 2017, photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File)
FILE - Peter Mandelson, the former U.K. ambassador to the United States, leaves his house in London, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
