Prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether top secret military information was included in emails sent to the unsecured private account of the prime minister’s then chief of staff. That account was later hacked and its contents leaked online.
“By a decision of 22 February 2023, an investigation was initiated regarding the disclosure of information…via unsecured means of communication, e-mail correspondence, containing data classified as ‘restricted’, ‘secret’ and ‘top secret’,” reads a letter from Warsaw prosecutors.
Przełom w sprawie maili Dworczyka! Państwo polskie pod naporem argumentów i po zawiadomieniu moim i @adamSzlapka wszczyna śledztwo w sprawie maili. Oficjalnie maile Dworczyka są prawdziwe. pic.twitter.com/8BhChHFJRi
— Cezary Tomczyk (@CTomczyk) March 1, 2023
The letter was received by two opposition MPs, Cezary Tomczyk and Adam Szłapka, who have filed numerous notifications to prosecutions of alleged potential crimes in relation to leaked emails from the private account of Michał Dworczyk when he served as chief of staff to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
In 2021, after emails purporting to be from his account began to be leaked online, Dworczyk confirmed that his and his wife’s accounts had been hacked. However, he said that no classified information was at risk.
Soon after, Polish officials blamed the Russian security services for the hacks. Many of the emails leaked online contained information embarrassing for the government. Morawiecki accused the media of “falling into Putin’s trap” by reporting their contents.
However, although the Polish authorities confirmed that Dworczyk’s account had been hacked, they have refused to confirm or deny the authenticity of leaked emails, and have suggested that some are falsified. Some of the emails, however, have been confirmed as genuine by people featured in them.
While Dworczyk resisted calls to resign over the scandal when it first broke in 2021, he did eventually step down in October 2022, though remains a member of the cabinet with ministerial rank.
The opposition has argued that the leaked emails are not only politically compromising for the government but that they also contain evidence of violations of the law. Prosecutors have now, for the first time, launched an investigation into those accusations, note Tomczyk and Szłapka.
The specific case in question concerns emails to Dworczyk from a defence advisor, Colonel Krzysztof Gaj. The correspondence contained sensitive and protected information, for example relating to Poland’s air defence system, reports news service TVN24.
In one email – from May 2020 and leaked online in October 2022 – Gaj even explicitly states that a document was classified, including with a “NATO restricted” clause.
Asked for comment by TVN24, Dworczyk said that he “does not know anything about classified information in my mailbox” and that he “has a statement from Colonel Gaj that he did not send any classified material”.
Both Gaj and Warsaw prosecutor’s office did not respond to requests from TVN24 for comment. The criminal offence of unlawfully disclosing classified information carries a prison sentence of up to five years.
Main image credit: Krystian Maj/KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
