Former head of the Polish Ministry of Justice Extremist right-wing party He is forced to face the charge that Negligently administered the Crime Victims Compensation Fund, Instead As a political bribe I used it.
Minister of Justice in the previous PiS government that ruled Poland from 2015 to last year Zbigniew Ziobro He was the head of the smaller Catholic nationalist party called Sovereign Poland, which was PiS's junior coalition partner.
He was one of the key figures in the struggle between Warsaw and Brussels over the rule of law. As minister, he pushed for sweeping changes to the justice system, bringing judges under close political control. He was also the country's top prosecutor, and during his tenure prosecutors tended to aggressively pursue political opponents while quietly dropping problematic cases, according to The Guardian. POLITICO.
Ziobro did not have easy access to the media and public money, as they were controlled by PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński. However, the Ministry of Justice operated a special fund that distributed hundreds of millions of zlotys annually to help victims of crime.
Last week, the former director of the fund said, Thomas Mraz He held a press conference in which he claimed that the fund distributed cash based on tenders supervised and personally manipulated by Ziobro.
According to Mraz, most of the tenders organized by the Justice Fund were conducted irregularly, and Zbigniew Ziobro was the main decision-maker in them.
The Sovereign Poland Party issued a press statement condemning Mraz, calling his testimony “a collection of nonsense and manipulation used to brutally attack party politicians”, adding:
There were no irregularities in the use of public funds. The Justice Fund for Poles provided dozens more grants than it provided during the Tusk government.
Mraz also testified before a parliamentary committee investigating abuses under the previous PiS government, which lost power in October to a coalition government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The Attorney General's Office is also investigating Mraz in connection with the fund's affairs.
According to the Prosecutor General's Office, about 285 million zlotys (25.65 billion forints) from the Justice Fund were misused for political purposes during the reign of Zbigniew Ziobro.
They are also accused of using the fund to purchase Pegasus spyware. Parliament is investigating whether Pegasus was used to monitor opposition politicians during the PiS government.
Tusk: We are dealing with an organized crime group
The case exploded as a political scandal while Donald Tusk was gathering support for the Civic Alliance party ahead of the European elections. “If this testimony is credible, we are effectively dealing with an organized criminal group led by the Attorney General,” the Prime Minister said on Thursday, adding:
I do not remember a single country in Europe in which such activity – which deserves to be called organized criminal activity – was led by the Minister of Justice and the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The prime minister has recently stepped up his rhetoric against PiS, portraying it as a corrupt force that has alienated Poland from the European Union's democratic mainstream and left the country vulnerable to Russian influence.
The current Minister of Justice and Attorney General Adam Bodnar He announced Thursday that he would provide more details this week about allegations of corruption at the Judicial Fund, and that as a result of the investigation “a proposal could be made to lift the immunity of the politicians involved.”
Skeletons are falling, and the fallen government services have been well preserved
Although the accusations against the new Tusk government – that it is conducting a witch-hunt against its predecessors – are not far from the truth, the previous government has also become exposed: not only were the Polish public media the main financiers of the Kaczynski regime, but the accusations leveled against the new Tusk government That it is carrying out a witch hunt against its predecessors is not far from the truth. Rather, the state treasury and even the Public Prosecution. They say this is just the beginning.The ruling Law and Justice Party, which lost the elections, has succeeded in improving the mechanism for generously honoring people close to it with public money over the past few years. After the change of government, details of this practice began to emerge. The amounts reach tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of zlotys.
PiS politicians strongly deny these accusations: “What was presented as a rigging of the competition in the Justice Fund was in fact an exercise of public power. People have entrusted ministers with the redistribution of funds,” said Jackie Patrick, a representative of the European Parliament.
