Associate of minister implicated in Polish visa corruption scandal disappears from government webpages

The name of a person charged in relation to a visa corruption scandal, and who was associated with a deputy foreign minister fired over the issue, has been removed from a number of government webpages. Some photographs of him alongside the deputy minister have also been deleted.

The man, who can be named only as Edgar K. under Polish privacy law, is one of seven people who have been charged in relation to the scandal, which has engulfed the government over the last two weeks.

Edgar K. was said to be a close associate of Piotr Wawrzyk, the deputy foreign minister fired after anticorruption offices visited the foreign ministry at the end of last month. Edgar K. was not employed by the ministry, but was appointed by Wawrzyk in 2021 to represent Polish youth at the United Nations.

Media reports, in particular by Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading daily critical of the government, have claimed that Edgar K. pressured officials on behalf of the ministry to expedite the visa application process for individuals whose names he sent to consulates by email.

He was detained in April for three months on corruption charges but, although still facing those charges, is no longer in custody, according to news website Wirtualna Polska. Edgar K.’s alleged crimes have, however, only become public knowledge this month after Wawrzyk’s sacking prompted media to investigate the case.

On Monday, an opposition MP, Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, one of the leaders of The Left (Lewica), noted that Edgar K.’s name had been removed from the government’s website.

She posted screenshots and links to the currently available version of the government website and an archived version from Wayback Machine, a digital internet archive, showing that Edgar K.’s name has been deleted from a text mentioning him being chosen as a Polish youth representative to the UN.

The screenshot shown by the MP still included the names of the other two delegates chosen, but without Edgar K. However, at the time of publication of this article, the entire page is no longer available online.

Referring to claims by government figures that “there is no visa scandal”, Dziemianowicz-Bąk write: “Wow. Visas for bribes are such a ‘non-scandal’ that someone working for the government is destroying evidence of Edgar K.’s connections with PiS politicians”.

At the time of publication of this article, there were some cases in which Edgar K’s name appeared on certain government webpages in a Google search but had been removed from the current version of the page. Notes from Poland found four such cases, for example here and here.

In some other cases, his name can be found in a Google search but then clicking through to the government website shows that the entire page is no longer available. Notes from Poland found seven such cases, for example here.

Konkret24, the factchecking service of broadcaster TVN24, noted yesterday that two articles containing photographs of Edgar K. alongside Wawczyk had disappeared from the government website.

However, Notes from Poland also found seven pages still available on the government website mentioning Edgar K.’s name, including one that pictures him alongside Wawrzyk.

The Government Information Centre has not responded to requests for comment from either Notes from Poland or Konkret24.

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Main photo credit: MSZ (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.