Leading Polish presidential candidate denies wrongdoing in second apartment controversy

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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.

Opposition candidate Karol Nawrocki, one of the two favourites to win Poland’s upcoming presidential election, has denied any wrongdoing after it emerged that he owns a second apartment, having declared in a recent TV debate that he only has one.

He suggests that the story has been “blown out of proportion” by media hostile towards him and even that the state security services were involved in creating the scandal.

However, leading figures from the ruling coalition, including a deputy prime minister, have said that Nawrocki has serious questions to answer about the revelations and that the information revealed so far undermines his credibility as a potential president.

The controversy was sparked by remarks that Nawrocki, the candidate supported by the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), made during last week’s presidential debate, in which he expressed opposition to a proposed property tax.

He said that he would “defend” Poles against the tax and that he was “speaking on behalf of ordinary Poles, like me, who have one apartment”.

However, shortly afterwards, news website Onet reported that Nawrocki in fact owns two apartments: one, a three-room 60m² property in Gdańsk, where he lives with his family; the second, also in Gdańsk, a 28.5m² studio.

Onet noted that, while the larger apartment was bought by Nawrocki and his wife with a mortgage, the second was obtained by them in 2017 from a man named only as Jerzy Ż. Five years earlier, they had already signed a preliminary agreement for the property.

In response, Nawrocki’s campaign spokeswoman, Emilia Wierzbicki, issued a statement on Wednesday last week saying that Nawrocki had always included all of his properties in asset declarations he had made and that his family “does not receive any income from owning the property” in question.

She added that the apartment “is at the disposal of a person who, for many years… Karol Nawrocki was the only one caring for”.

On Sunday evening, ahead of a further article about the apartment due to be published by Onet on Monday, Wierzbicki released another statement outlining how “Nawrocki has been helping Jerzy, who is a disabled person living alone, for many years.”

“Karol Nawrocki gave Jerzy money to buy the apartment, which Jerzy promised to give to Nawrocki in exchange for the help he provided,” she added. “When Jerzy came into conflict with the law, he continued to ask Karol Nawrocki for help many times and always received it.”

Wierzbicki said that this support had continued even after Nawrocki became the owner of the apartment, which Jerzy Ż continued to use. “Karol Nawrocki never lived in this apartment, never rented it out, nor did he derive any financial benefit from it.”

“The use of [this] case to attack Karol Nawrocki proves that the security services are engaged in a dirty campaign,” wrote the spokeswoman. “We have received information that a group of people is working on this, whose goal is to provide information from Karol Nawrocki’s personal security forms to the media.”

In her latest statement, Wierzbicki said that Nawrocki had lost contact with Jerzy Ż last year, when he was no longer able to locate him. In their article published today, Onet reported that this is because Jerzy Ż, aged 80, is now living in a state nursing home.

The website said that Nawrocki’s campaign had for days been refusing to respond to their journalists’ questions and that Wierzbicki’s statement on Sunday contained “many inaccuracies”.

Onet reported that the city of Gdańsk had been paying almost 100,000 zloty (€23,350) a year for Jerzy Ż’s care and that Nawrocki “does not contribute a penny”.

On Monday, Nawrocki himself then addressed the issue at a press conference. He said that he had been “taking care of an old, sick man who was my neighbour for years”.

Nawrocki confirmed that the situation “ultimately ended with me being the legal owner of the apartment, to which I do not have keys, because this man lived in this apartment and I did not derive any benefits from it”.

“If there is a legal possibility to publish my financial declaration, I will do it,” he added. When Nawrocki was asked why he did not contact the police when he was unable to find Jerzy Ż last year, he did not answer. Nor did he respond to questions asking how much he paid for the apartment.

Like Wierzbicki, Nawrocki suggested that the state security services were behind the story. “The Internal Security Agency (ABW) has joined the Polish institutions helping Rafał Trzaskowski,” said Nawrocki, referring to the candidate of Poland’s main ruling party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO).

Government figures, however, say that Nawrocki still has many questions to answer. They also claim that the details revealed so far indicate that Nawrocki is not fit to be president.

The fact that Nawrocki simply lost contact with Jerzy Ż “looks bad”, said deputy prime minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz. “Just as Nawrocki did not take care of Jerzy, as he had committed to do, he also will not take care of Poland [if elected president].”

“Lies, deceit, contempt, greed and heartlessness – and, for camouflage, covered with fake charity and care,” wrote education minister Barbara Nowacka. “Sound familiar? Yes!! Eight years of their [PiS] rule were like that too.”

Meanwhile, Anna-Maria Żukowska, head of the parliamentary caucus of The Left (Lewica), one of Poland’s ruling parties, said that Nawrocki’s claims he had not lived in or profited from the apartment are irrelevant given that ownership of it may have significantly increased his wealth.

She asked for further information on what terms the Nawrockis had bought the property. “And all this involving a disabled elderly person who, on top of that, fell into legal troubles (debts?), whose tragic situation you exploited, only to later check if he’s even alive once a year at Christmas.”

Nawrocki, who is president of the state Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), was named last year as the candidate PiS would support in the presidential election. He is currently running second in the polls, behind Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw.

In recent weeks, Nawrocki has significantly closed the polling gap to Trzaskowski ahead of the first round of the election on 18 May. If, as likely, no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, a run-off between the top two will take place on 1 June.

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: Mikołaj Bujak/IPN (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

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.