Polish opposition politician and wife detained over alleged corruption case

A politician from Poland’s opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, Ryszard Czarnecki, and his wife have been detained and questioned by prosecutors in relation to alleged corruption connected with a private university. Media reports indicate that they have been charged with a number of alleged crimes.

News of the detention of Czarnecki, who has waived his right to anonymity, at a Warsaw airport and his wife, who can be named only as Emilia H., was announced on Wednesday afternoon by Jacek Dobrzyński, the spokesman for the security services.

He noted that the proceedings, which are being carried out by the Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA) and the National Prosecutor’s Office, concern Collegium Humanum, a private university based in Warsaw.

Collegium Humanum, which was founded in 2018, has been shrouded in controversy since 2020, when media reports began to emerge that it was acting as a degree factory, providing MBAs to figures associated with the then-ruling PiS party that allowed them to take positions at state-owned companies.

It later also emerged that figures associated with the then-opposition Civic Platform (PO), which is now the main ruling party, also received degrees from the college.

Last year, six people associated with the university were detained. Its rector, Paweł Czarnecki, is facing 75 charges for a variety of alleged crimes, including for accepting over 1 million zloty in return for issuing over 1,000 diplomas, reports the Rzeczpospolita daily.

Some media reports have suggested that Paweł Czarnecki is Ryszard Czarnecki’s nephew, but the PiS politician denies they are related. Ryszard Czarnecki was, however, publicly associated with Collegium Humanum, where he is an honorary professor.

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After being arrested at a Warsaw airport – where he had returned from attending a conference of political conservatives in Albania – Czarnecki was taken to the prosecutor’s office in the city of Katowice, which he was pictured leaving later the same day.

Czarnecki told journalists that the action being taken against him and his wife was “political theatre”. Dobrzyński, however, told broadcaster TVN that “the case concerns a strong suspicion of corruption”.

Broadcasters TVN and Polsat both reported on Wednesday morning that they had learnt that Czarnecki and his wife have heard “several” charges from prosecutors.

Onet, a news website, reports that the charges relate to Emila H. allegedly receiving a job at Collegium Humanum in return for Czarnecki lobbying the authorities in Uzbekistan to allow a branch of the university to be established in that country.

The latest allegations against Czarnecki come a month after he was charged in a separate case relating to alleged fraud in over €200,000 of his travel expenses while serving as a member of the European Parliament. The politician also denies guilt in that case.

Between 2014 and 2018, Czarnecki served as one of the European Parliament’s vice presidents. However, he was dismissed from the position after calling a fellow Polish MEP a szmalcownik – a derogatory term for a Pole who blackmailed Jews or those hiding them during the Holocaust.

At this year’s European elections in June, Czarnecki lost his seat in the parliament, which he had held since 2004.

Main image credit: euranet_plus/Flickr (under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Daniel Tilles

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.