What was initially presented as a great deal quickly unraveled. On Friday, May 30, Czech Justice Minister Pavel Blazek, the 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 Wednesday, on X, that it had 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 had been found guilty of running Sheep Marketplace, a marketplace on the dark web known for dealing illegal products.

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