“Serious irregularities” in prison programme, finds Supreme Audit Office

A report by Poland’s Supreme Audit Office (NIK) – a state institution that audits public spending – has revealed “numerous irregularities in the funding of investments and renovations paid for by public money”.

Government figures dismissed NIK’s findings as a politically motivated attempt at revenge by Marian Banaś, the scandal-hit head of the office, who has resisted repeated calls from the government to resign.

The report, presented at a press conference on Tuesday, concerned an audit carried out on the “Work for Prisoners” programme, the flagship initiative of former deputy justice minister Patryk Jaki, who earlier this year left the position to become an MEP.

As part of the scheme, 40 production halls were to be built in prisons to provide work for inmates. NIK announced that it had observed 27 cases of failure to conduct public tenders in accordance with the law, as well as numerous instances of halls being rented below their market value.

“Numerous irregularities were noticed in the funding of investments and renovations implemented as part of the programme”, according to the NIK, which as a consequence has submitted 16 notifications of potential crimes to prosecutors

It continued: “The total amount of money spent in this way was more than 115 million zloty. Auditors also found a number of cases of lowering the rental rate of leased industrial halls, the losses from which could be as much as 37 million zloty.”

The opposition Civic Platform (PO) claims that the findings show, at the least, “massive negligence” but also perhaps deliberate attempts to defraud the state. They have demanded further details on the private firms that received the monies in question, and have called on the justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, to explain the situation before the parliamentary justice committee.

However, according to leading government figures, the report is a diversion tactic by Banaś. Jaki described it as “ridiculous and typically political”, while Deputy Prime Minister Jacek Sasin said:

What we have at present is an extraordinary situation surrounding NIK and its president, and this kind of operation, when they pull out a report that was written and discussed a while ago but only now serves to make serious allegations and inform the prosecutor’s office, seems to me to be an attempt to divert attention from the [NIK] president’s problems.

Sasin was referring to the fact that the auditing work was completed in June, when under NIK’s previous president. According to the Rzeczpospolita daily, the initial findings pointed to “certain shortcomings, but no breaking of any laws for which prosecutors needed to be informed”.

The suggestion, therefore, is that the current president, Banaś, has exaggerated the findings and published them now as part of a counterattack against the government, following recent efforts to oust him over allegations of impropriety, including claims of links to a criminal group.

Despite calls from Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to resign from the post, Banaś has so far refused to budge. In a recent video message, he claimed that he had been ready to do so, but had then become aware that he was being used as part of “a brutal political game” and could not allow NIK to become “an object of political games and bargaining”.

Media speculation has suggested that the new NIK report may be one of a number that Banaś will release in the near future in his power struggle with the government, which he had served as finance minister before his appointment to NIK in August.

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.