Ex-justice minister Ziobro used crime victim fund for political purposes, claims former associate

May 23, 2024 | Law, Politics

A justice ministry fund intended to support victims of crime was in fact used for political purposes through rigged contests under the orders of former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, says an official who oversaw the fund during part of the period in question.

His accusations have, however, been rejected as “nonsense and manipulation” by Ziobro’s right-wing Sovereign Poland (Suwerenna Polska) party, which was a junior partner in the Law and Justice-led (PiS) government that ruled from 2015 until the end of last year.

The claims were made yesterday by a former director of the department overseeing the so-called Justice Fund, which distributes hundreds of millions of zloty a year to projects seeking to prevent crime, rehabilitate convicts as well as help victims.

He gave testimony to a parliamentary team investigating alleged wrongdoing under the former PiS government.

Allegations regarding irregularities in the use of the Justice Fund have regularly appeared in the media. In 2021, the state audit office found that the fund had been operating “in violation of the basic principles of public spending”, allowing it to become a “corruption-generating mechanism”.

The fund’s former director who gave testimony yesterday is himself subject to an investigation by prosecutors into the functioning of the fund. Today, the national prosecutor’s office confirmed that he was in February charged with abuse of power in relation to his oversight of the fund.

Those charges mean that he can now only be named as Tomasz M. under Polish privacy law.

Yesterday, Tomasz M. told the parliamentary team that the scale of irregularities is much greater than that previously reported by journalists. “As far as I am aware, most of the [funding] contests that were announced as part of the Justice Fund were conducted in an unreliable manner,” he said.

He also rejected claims made by Ziobro in March – after his home was raided as part of prosecutors’ investigation into the fund – that as justice minister he had not been personally involved in deciding who received money from the fund.

Ziobro “was, in fact, the main decision-maker”, said Tomasz M., quoted by broadcaster TVN. The former official also said he had to consult all decisions regarding the fund with then deputy justice minister Marcin Romanowski, who is also a Sovereign Poland politician.

“Romanowski received instructions from Ziobro regarding which entities were to win [grants],” said Tomasz M. “It was with [Ziobro] that [Romanowski] would make the list of these entities [and] decide when the contests were to be announced. Ziobro himself held talks with the entities that were to win future contest.”

He claimed that contests would be created specifically to fit criteria met by the beneficiary chosen by Ziobro. One such beneficiary, said Tomasz M., was the Profeto Foundation, which was awarded grants totalling around 100 million zloty (€23.4 million) from the fund.

Media reports have claimed that the priest who runs the foundation, Michał Olszewski, is a friend of Ziobro. Olszewski is currently in pretrial detention after being charged as a result of the investigation into the justice fund.

During his testimony yesterday, Tomasz M. said that he believed Olszewski’s foundation should never have participated in the contest as the “objectives in its statutes did not coincide with those of the announced competition.” He claims that he was reprimanded when he raised those doubts in the ministry.

Tomasz M. also testified that he had attended a meeting at Ziobro’s home, where Romanowski, another deputy justice minister, Michał Woś, and Sovereign Poland politician Dariusz Matecki were present.

At the meeting, it was decided that several entites, including some associated with Matecki, would win a contest for money from the Justice Fund, which would be used “to create regional websites [that would] praise the actions of Sovereign Poland politicians”.

“Their purpose was to build political capital using funds from the Justice Fund,” said Tomasz M. “This was decided by Ziobro. Nothing could have happened without his knowledge and approval.”

However, in a statement published after Tomasz M.’s testimony, Sovereign Poland called his claims “a load of nonsense and manipulation” that were part of a “smear campaign”.

“There were no irregularities in the disposal of public funds in the former justice ministry,” wrote the party on X. “And the Justice Fund provided assistance to Poles more than a dozen times greater than under the [previous] government.”

The party also accused the chairman of the parliamentary team investigating the fund, Roman Giertych, of carrying out a “lynching of the sick Zbigniew Ziobro”, who is currently undergoing treatment for cancer.

They said Giertych, who is an MP in the ruling coalition, was using “mobster-like methods” and exploting an “intimidated ‘whistleblower'”. Giertych is both head of the parliamentary team investigating alleged wrongdoing under PiS as well as a lawyer representing Tomasz M.

In a statement issued today, the national prosecutor’s office confirmed that, since being charged in February, Tomasz M. “has been interrogated several dozen times as a suspect”.

The testimony he provided then led prosecutors to bring charged against five further people in March in connection to rigging funding contests. They added that his evidence is also the basis for prosecutors seeking to strip the immunity of a number of MPs to face charges in relation to the Justice Fund.

Also speaking today, justice minister Adam Bodnar, who also serves as public prosecutor general, announced that requests to strip MPs of immunity would be made in “a matter of days rather than weeks”.


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Main image credit: / flickr.com (under public domain)

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