Polish government finds large-scale irregularities in predecessor’s Smolensk investigation commission

Oct 24, 2024 | Defence, Law, Politics

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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.

An investigation by Poland’s defence ministry has found that the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government wasted tens of millions of zloty on a commission to reinvestigate the 2010 plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, that killed PiS-aligned President Lech Kaczyński.

The ministry will notify prosecutors of 41 suspected crimes relating to the functioning of the commission, which it says was established with the sole purpose of proving that the crash was caused deliberately – as claimed by PiS leader and Lech’s twin brother, Jarosław Kaczyński – despite evidence to the contrary.

However, the former head of the commission, PiS deputy leader Antoni Macierewicz, says that the findings presented today are “lies and disinformation” designed to “protect Putin”.

The Smolensk investigatory commission was established in 2016 by the defence ministry when it was led by Macierewicz, who had long argued that the previous official Polish and Russian investigations into the crash covered up the true causes.

Despite Macierewicz and Kaczyński regularly claiming over the following years that the commission would soon publish decisive evidence proving that the crash was deliberately caused, it never did so.

The current government, which replaced PiS in office last December, abolished the commission just two days after coming to power. The following month, the government set up a team of experts to assess how the commission had functioned.

 

Their findings show that the commission’s “real purpose was not to examine all possible hypotheses” about what caused the crash, but “to confirm only one hypothesis of an explosion and to reject all other expert arguments that did not confirm this hypothesis”, said defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz today.

It also had a “political [purpose] to deepen the divisions in society” over the Smolensk tragedy, which as well Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria killed 94 others, many of them high-ranking officials.

The investigators “negatively assessed the performance of the Smolensk subcommission in all aspects: economic, legal, purposefulness and reliability”, said Kosiniak-Kamysz. “Irregularities were indicated in all these areas.”

The 800-page report produced by his team will be the basis for 41 notifications to prosecutors of potential crimes, including against Macierewicz and his successor as defence minister under the PiS government, Mariusz Błaszczak.

Describing some of his team’s findings, Kosiniak-Kamysz said that Macierewicz’s commission had contained people who “had no qualifications” to hold the role. Their findings had “confused basic concepts and “went against the laws of physics”.

As a result of such failings, the commission was found to have operated in a financially wasteful manner, costing the Polish state more than 80 million zloty (€18.5 million).

That included the 47 million zloty value of a plane similar to the one that crashed in Smolensk, which was destroyed while being used to test hypotheses of what led to the crash. One million zloty was spent on personal security for Macierewicz, as well as 17 million zloty on 120 expert studies.

Emails uncovered by the investigation also showed that Macierewicz had offered a British aviation expert, Christopher Protheroe, £5,000 to change the content of a report he had written. Protheroe angrily rejected the suggestion, which he told Macierewicz “constitutes a bribe” and “is an attack on my integrity”.

The report’s conclusions “are devastating and shameful for those who led this commission, but they are distressing for all of us”, said Kosiniak-Kamysz. “It is unfortunate that a national issue has been exploited in such a partisan manner.”

However, Macierewicz told conservative broadcaster TV Republika today that what the defence ministry had presented today was “99% lies, disinformation, and attempts to manipulate”.

“The aim is to deceive society about Putin’s crimes,” he added. “The aim is to protect Putin and the policies of [Prime Minister] Donald Tusk.”


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: Slawomir Kaminski / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

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