Former Polish government oversaw “unlawful, corruption-prone” visa system, finds state auditor

A leaked copy of a report by Poland’s state auditor indicates large-scale irregularities in the issuing of visas under the former Law and Justice (PiS) government. Over 366,000 were granted to people from Asian and African countries while others were given to Russians after the invasion of Ukraine.

The Supreme Audit Office (NIK) found that political pressure was placed on consuls to issue large numbers of visas for specific recipients and that IT system failings have made it impossible to verify if some visas were issued correctly.

Donald Tusk, head of the government that replaced PiS last year, says the findings have “confirmed our worst suspicions”. President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, has called for further investigation into whether the former visa system “contributed to effective illegal migration”.

The investigation by NIK was prompted by revelations last year, while PiS was still in power, that corruption had allowed some potential immigrants to effectively pay to skip the queue for visas. There were also claims of political pressure to grant visas to certain candidates.

NIK’s report was completed in July this year and runs to 300 pages, according to Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading daily that has obtained a copy of the document and is this week publishing extracts of it. The newspaper is strongly critical of PiS, as is Marian Banaś, the president of NIK.

The report finds that “the actions taken by the foreign ministry in the area of ​​supervision over the visa component of consular activities were unlawful, inappropriate and unreliable, and resulted in the mismanagement of public funds”.

It says that this “caused a significant and unprecedented threat to the interests of Poland and the security of citizens”.

It created a “non-transparent and corruption-prone mechanism for influencing some consuls” in the issuing of visas, adds NIK. The auditors specifically name four PiS-era foreign ministers – Witold Waszczykowski, Jacek Czaputowicz, Zbigniew Rau and Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk – as to blame for the irregularities.

The report notes that, in the years 2018 to 2022, Poland issued around 6.5 million visas, which was much more than either Germany or Spain in the same period.

That included 366,551 visas for people from what Gazeta Wyborcza describes as “Muslim and African countries”, an issue that has caused particular controversy in Poland as well as accusations of hypocrisy against the national-conservative PiS, which has publicly opposed such immigration.

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NIK’s report claims that consuls were constantly pressured to issue as many visas as possible, without clear guidelines or priorities for which types of immigrants should get them.

The auditors also found that visas continued to be granted to Russians even after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine under a programme known as Poland Business Harbour (PBH) that had been launched by PiS to attract highly qualified professionals – especially in the IT sector – from Poland’s eastern neighbours.

NIK in fact believes that the entire PBH programme was implemented without a proper legal basis, reports Gazeta Wyborcza. The scheme was suspended earlier this year by the new government shortly after it came to power.

The auditors also found that, due to IT failings, it is impossible to verify whether 17,000 student visas were issued correctly because the necessary information was not entered to the system and relevant documents are only stored by the foreign ministry for a year.

They also found evidence of irregularities related to the actions of a former deputy foreign minister, Piotr Wawrzyk, who was last year detained and later charged over his role in alleged corruption.

NIK found evidence that Wawrzyk had forwarded to consuls “lists with the names of people for whom third parties expected acceleration of visa procedures”.

One of the companies that reportedly benefited from this was an employment agency called HR Motives, which helped obtain visas for 4,500 people from Asian and African countries.

In response to Gazeta Wyborcza’s publication of extracts of the NIK report, Prime Minister Tusk tweeted that it “confirmed our worst suspicions”.

“While Polish soldiers and border guards were risking their health and lives to protect us from the wave of illegal migration organised by Putin and Lukashenko, the PiS government let in 366,000 people from Asia and Africa, including for bribes,” he added.

However, President Duda said that it was necessary to establish exactly what proportion of those 366,000 visas were issued irregularly.

“According to NIK, most of these visas were issued to meet the expectations of Polish businesses…due to the lack of necessary workers,” said the president, quoted by the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

“Therefore, there is a fundamental question of to what extent these visas were implemented properly…and to what extent it contributed to negative, pathological phenomena, such as effective illegal migration,” he added.

Despite coming to power in 2015 on the back of anti-migrant rhetoric, during its time in office PiS oversaw the largest wave of immigration in Poland’s history, and among the largest anywhere in Europe at that time.

For the last seven years running, Poland has issued more first residence permits to immigrants from outside the EU than any other member state. Last year, it issued 643,000 such permits, ahead of Germany (586,000) and Spain (549,000).

Main image credit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 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.