Keep our news free from ads and paywalls by making a donation to support our work!

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 politicians Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik, who both served as ministers in Poland’s former Law and Justice (PiS) government, will face trial after prosecutors today filed indictments against them. If found guilty, they could face up to five years in jail.

They are accused of illegally participating in parliamentary sessions despite being banned from public office as a result of earlier convictions for abuse of power. However, the pair have long argued that those previous sentences were invalid because they received pre-emptive presidential pardons.

Kamiński and Wąsik were in December 2023 found guilty of abusing their powers while running Poland’s Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA). The court handed them two-year prison terms and also banned them from holding public office for five years.

Despite this, the pair continued to participate in the activities of the Polish parliament, for which they were charged in April 2024. The crime in question, of failing to comply with an imposed penal measure, is punishable by a prison sentence of between three months and five years.

But subsequently, Kamiński and Wąsik were elected to represent PiS in the European Parliament, granting them legal immunity. In April this year, the European Parliament approved a request from Poland’s prosecutor general to lift their immunity.

Today, the Warsaw district prosecutor’s office announced that the pair have been indicted, meaning they will face trial. It said that they had violated their ban on holding public office by taking part in parliamentary activities, including votes and a committee meeting, on 21 and 28 December 2023.

 

Do you live in Poland and rely on our reporting to stay informed and feel connected?
If you read our work and value its clarity, donate here to allow our non-profit media outlet to keep going.

 

However, Kamiński and Wąsik have long argued that the sentences they received in December 2023 were unlawful because Duda, a PiS ally, had in 2015 pardoned them of the crimes they committed while previously heading the CBA.

Duda’s pardon was issued after the pair had been convicted of abuse of power by a first-instance court but before their appeals against those convictions had been heard.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that Duda’s pardons had been invalid because they were issued before a final verdict had been issued. However, the Constitutional Tribunal, a body widely seen as under PiS influence, separately ruled that the Supreme Court had no authority to challenge presidential pardons.

In January 2024, the pair were detained by police at the presidential palace and taken to jail, where they spent two weeks before being pardoned again by Duda.

Kamiński and Wąsik have long maintained that both the previous case against them – which resulted in the December 2023 conviction – and the current one are politically motivated. Both men condemned today’s indictment using such arguments.

“It is hard to imagine more political accusations than charging MPs for carrying out their duties towards voters,” wrote Kamiński on X.

Wąsik, meanwhile, wrote that he and Kamiński had been “convicted for pursuing corruption at the highest levels of power” and that they continued to be targeted by those seeking “to settle scores” with them.

Since replacing PiS in power in December 2023, the current government, a broad coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, has made holding former PiS officials to account for alleged crimes one of its main priorities. PiS, however, says that those efforts are politically motivated.


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: MSWiA (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Pin It on Pinterest

Support us!