The Czech government resisted a political storm this week, surviving a vote without confidence launched by a bitcoin payment of $ 45 million in a convicted criminal.
The scandal rocked the administration of Prime Minister Petr Fiala for the months before the national elections, reports Reuters.
The payment of 468 bitcoin was made to the State by a man previously imprisoned for having directed a Darknet drug market called Sheep Marketplace.
The donation was accepted by the Minister of Justice at the time, Pavel Blazek, who later resigned in the midst of the reaction, in the name of the government. Bitcoin was sold for around 1 billion Czech Koruna, worth around 45 million dollars.
The Opposition Party Ano, which directs the polls before the October vote, filed a request without confidence and accused the coalition to the power to have potentially helped in the laundering of illicit assets, because the source of the BTC is not clear.
Critics say that the government should have involved prosecutors or police instead of accepting potentially tainted cryptographic funds. After two days of debate, the request failed in the lower chamber, where the coalition of Fiala retains a majority.
However, Blazek insisted that he acted legally by accepting the donation, which represented around 30% of the crypto found on the returned devices of the man.
The donor’s reasons remain vague. The case rocked the government of a country whose central bank at the start of this year approved a proposal to study Bitcoin as a reserve asset. The head of the Czech National Bank, Ales Michl, even said that Bitcoin should not be “grouped” with the crypto.
Polymarket merchants are currently seeing the main opposition party, Ano, winning the parliamentary elections in October. The chances perceived of this result are currently 92%, while the chances of the ODS part of Blazek are only 6%.
