President grants pardon from defamation conviction to activist fighting Warsaw property corruption

Jan Śpiewak, a Warsaw activist known for rooting out property corruption in Warsaw, today received a presidential pardon from a defamation verdict. He had been found guilty after accusing the daughter of a former justice minister of being involved in illegal property restitution.

Some commentators and politicians – from both left and right – welcomed the decision. They praised Śpiewak for his work and said it was unjust that he was punished while many involved in corrupt property dealings remain at liberty.

Others, however, criticised President Andrzej Duda’s decision, arguing that it was a political move ahead of the election – in which his main rival is the mayor of Warsaw – and that it sets a dangerous example.

“Justice has been done,” declared Śpiewak on his social media. “I want to thank the president for this act of pardon. I have always been on the side of people and acted in the public interest.”

Śpiewak has in the past been a critic of the judicial reforms introduced by President Duda and the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party. But he said that because his conviction “defied the basic principles of the rule of law” he “decided to use every possible path to clear my sentence”.

Śpiewak has above all become known for trying to expose cases of corruption regarding the restitution, or “reprivatisation”, of property in Warsaw that was nationalised during the communist period.

Participants in the scandal are accused, among other crimes, of using intimidation against tenants of buildings and of faking birth certificates to demonstrate ownership. The issue was the subject of a detailed story in the Guardian in 2017.

The scandal dogged the term of former Warsaw mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, with a number of officials from city hall detained over corruption allegations and even her own husband and daughter accused of earning millions of zloty from an allegedly unlawful reprivatisation case.

Responding to his pardon today, Śpiewak said that the government still needs to take further steps to tackle “wild reprivatisation” and the “mafia” responsible for it.

“I am waiting for real action,” he wrote. “For the passing of a reprivatisation law blocking wild property takeovers, paying compensation to the victims of the illegal actions of Warsaw city hall and the capital’s courts”.

Śpiewak asked President Duda for the pardon last December, after he was ordered by a court to pay a 10,000 zloty fine for the defamation of Bogumiła Górnikowska-Ćwiąkalska, the daughter of a justice minister in the former government led by the centrist Civic Platform (PO).

Śpiewak had accused her of involvement in illegal property restitution by becoming the custodian for a 118-year-old owner of a pre-war townhouse in Warsaw, resulting in her taking over the ownership of half of the house.

Announcing the pardon, the head of the president’s office, Paweł Mucha, said that in making the decision President Duda took into account Śpiewak’s “social activity for the benefit of the city of Warsaw” as well as “the motives behind his actions”.

The president decided that “the consequences of the conviction far exceeded the normal level of burdensomeness”, said Mucha, and therefore issued the pardon based on “the principles of humanitarianism, but above all justice”.

One of Duda’s rivals in this year’s presidential election, left-wing candidate Robert Biedroń, welcomed the decision. “Śpiewak was brave enough to fight the wild reprivatisation”, he wrote on Twitter. “I’m glad he has been pardoned.”

An MP from the right-wing ruling PiS party likewise praised the decision. “Śpiewak was the only one sentenced [over reprivatisation], because he was telling the truth,” wrote Maria Koc. “The mob bosses, who are throwing people onto the streets, are doing great, but the man who defended the victims is the one to be sentenced.”

However there are those who interpret Duda’s decision as a political move in the midst of a presidential campaign. Lena Kolarska-Bobińska, a former PO minister, suggested that Śpiewak will now be given a prominent role in Andrzej Duda’s campaign.

Kolarska-Bobińska also wrote that Śpiewak will now show his gratitude to the president by attacking the main opposition candidate, Rafał Trzaskowski, who succeeded Gronkiewicz-Waltz as mayor of Warsaw. Both are from PO.

Others warned that the pardon sets a dangerous example. “[It] is a slap in the face for the whole society,” wrote Piotr Kołomycki, a PO official in Warsaw. “There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from this: if you vilify, manipulate and lie, but you’re doing it in PiS’s interest, you don’t need to worry about the courts’ verdicts.”

Main image credit: JanDawidSpiewak/Facebook

Agnieszka Wądołowska

Agnieszka Wądołowska is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She has previously worked for Gazeta.pl and Tokfm.pl and contributed to Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, Duży Format, Midrasz and Kultura Liberalna