Warsaw mayor “concerned” at report city buses refuelled by company recently on Russia sanctions list

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

A journalistic investigation has found that Warsaw’s Municipal Bus Company (MZA) has been receiving fuel for some of its vehicles from a company that was until recently Russian owned, with links to Gazprom, and which was on Poland’s sanctions list.

Adding to the controversy, the company was last month removed by the government from the sanctions list after being sold to two of its longstanding Polish employees for the price of just 3 zloty (€0.70), a transaction that the previous Polish government rejected as an attempt to evade sanctions.

MZA insists that it has complied with all relevant laws. Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who is also the presidential candidate of Poland’s main ruling party, says he is “concerned” about the situation and has asked the interior ministry to re-examine the issue.

Wirtualna Polska, a leading Polish news website, reported on Monday that in September 2024, MZA, which is owned by the city of Warsaw, purchased a bus depot that contains a station for refuelling vehicles with liquefied natural gas (LNG) and compressed natural gas (CNG).

That filling station was in turn run by a firm called Cryogas under a preexisting agreement that MZA inherited as part of the purchase.

Cryogas was at the time of the purchase Russian owned, with 52.77% of shares held by OOO Rometa Capital and 24.6% by AO Kriogaz, both based in Russia. The remaining 22.62% was owned by Cryoenergy Limited, based in Cyprus. Cryogas previously purchased fuel from Gazprom and had bank accounts at Gazprombank.

In July 2023, when Poland was still ruled by the former Law and Justice (PiS) government, Cryogas was added to the interior ministry’s list of companies sanctioned for links to Russia and its war in Ukraine.

The firm then submitted a request to be removed from the list based in part on the argument that it would soon become Polish because its existing owners were planning to sell it to a company set up by two of its Polish employees.

However, those two employees were the CEO of Cryogas and his deputy and they would pay only a symbolic 3 zloty for a firm worth millions, reports Wirtualna Polska. The interior ministry deemed that to be an “attempt to circumvent” the law and refused to remove the firm from the sanctions list.

In October 2024 (a month after MZA had bought the bus depot in Warsaw) the 3-zloty sale of Cryogas went ahead and the company was renamed as Omne Energia. However, it remained on the Polish sanctions list.

In November 2024, Wirtualna Polska reports, municipal buses in Warsaw began entering the depot and using the refilling station. Neither MZA nor Omne Energia answered the website’s questions about where the gas supplied there comes from.

However, Wirtualna Polska notes that firms on Poland’s sanctions list are not completely banned from business activity. They can, for example, continue to service preexisting contracts with public authorities.

In December 2024, the interior ministry – now under the authority of a new government led by Donald Tusk that had taken power a year earlier – removed Omne Energia from the sanctions list. It did so on the basis that the firm was now no longer Russian owned and because it had cut its ties with Gazprom.

Wirtualna Polska’s findings prompted criticism from PiS, which is now the main opposition party. “Warsaw is violating sanctions imposed on Russia,” tweeted former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

“For 3 zloty, a Russian company disappears from the sanctions list and information about it was supposed to disappear from the public space,” wrote PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński.

Both Kaczyński and Morawiecki claimed that Warsaw buses were being filled with Russian fuel. However, that claim was not made in Wirtualna Polska’s article and Trzaskowski, Warsaw’s mayor, said at a press conference today that it is untrue.

“There is no Russian gas in Warsaw buses,” confirmed interior minister Tomasz Siemoniak, quoted by broadcaster TVP. “And there is no risk that Russian gas will appear in Warsaw buses or any other buses, because no one imports it [to Poland].”

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Warsaw city hall, Monika Beuth, told Wirtualna Polska that Trzaskowski “is concerned about reports of possible attempts to circumvent sanctions”.

However, she also noted that “city hall and municipal companies operate according to the law” and that in this case “the decision of the interior ministry is binding on us”.

Speaking today, Trzaskowski noted that he had written to the interior ministry asking it to clarify the issue. “I will exert pressure on this matter and I will demand from the ministry that this matter be clearly explained and that there be no doubts,” he said.

Siemoniak, in an interview with broadcaster TVN, defended his ministry’s decision to remove Omne Energia from the sanctions list, saying it had been made because “this company was no longer Russian”. He said that the PiS government made similar decisions regarding eight other companies.

Meanwhile, MZA itself issued a statement to Polsat News saying that Wirtualna Polska’s article “contains false information”. The company said it “does not and has not concluded agreements with entities subject to sanctions”.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: UM Warszawa

Agata Pyka

Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.