Polish justice minister suspends prosecutor investigating claim government led coup d’état

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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.

Justice minister and public prosecutor general Adam Bodnar has suspended and launched disciplinary proceedings against a senior prosecutor who is investigating claims by the head of the constitutional court that Prime Minister Donald Tusk and other government ministers – including Bodnar himself – are guilty of a “coup d’état”.

Bodnar’s office says that Michał Ostrowski, the deputy prosecutor general in question, has committed an “obvious and gross violation of the law” in his handling of the case.

However, senior figures from the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party have accused Tusk and Bodnar of interfering to prevent an investigation into their own alleged crimes.

The development marks a further twist in Poland’s deepening rule-of-law crisis, which has seen the Tusk government’s efforts to undo the judicial overhaul undertaken by the former PiS administration meet with resistance from officials who were appointed under PiS.

On Tuesday morning, media reports first emerged that Ostrowski had been suspended for six months. Shortly after 9 a.m. that was confirmed by Bodnar’s office, which said it would provide further details at a press conference in the afternoon.

However, around an hour later Bodnar’s office released a further statement outlining that Ostrowski had been suspended for showing “a lack of respect for the basic principles of the functioning of the prosecutor’s office and…[creating] the perception of this institution as a body involved in the protection of particular political interests”.

It also revealed that he was facing disciplinary action for initiating and conducting an investigation without properly registering it and in a manner that “violated the principle of objectivity and impartiality” by “acting in the interest of a specific group of persons”.

Ostrowski was appointed as deputy prosecutor general during PiS’s time in power and is seen as a close ally of former PiS justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro.

Last week, the head of the Constitutional Tribunal (TK), Bogdan Święczkowski, a PiS-era appointee to the TK and another ally of Ziobro, announced that he had filed a notification to Ostrowski accusing senior government figures of operating as an “organised criminal group” in order to mount a “coup”.

Święczkowski claims that the government and other senior officials linked to it have sought to unlawfully “change the constitutional system of Poland”, including by restricting and undermining the activities of the TK, the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS), and the Supreme Court.

However, after Święczkowski’s announcement, Bodnar’s spokeswoman, Anna Adamiak, announced that Ostrowski had not filed documents relating to the alleged investigation.

On Monday this week, national prosecutor Dariusz Korneluk told broadcaster TVN that Bodnar had already sent two requests for Ostrowski to release the documents and had set a deadline for him to do so by the end of the day.

The position of Korneluk himself is also contested. He was appointed a year ago by Bodnar in a decision declared unlawful by Ostrowski and other PiS-era senior prosecutors and later rejected by the Supreme Court. But Bodnar argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling was issued by illegitimate judges.

Broadcaster WNET reported on Monday that Ostrowski had been reluctant to hand over the case files to Bodnar because Bodnar himself is a person concerned in the case.

However, he eventually provided Bodnar with the files on Monday, but only for inspection and with a request to return them immediately after they had been reviewed, according to WNET.

Speaking this morning to broadcaster wPolsce24, Ostrowski said that he has been informed of his suspension but not the reasoning for it.

Ostrowski also confirmed WNET’s reporting that he had handed over the case files in the “coup” case to Bodnar on Monday. He also noted that he has so far questioned ten people as witnesses, including former PiS Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

On Monday, the head of the Supreme Court (a separate body from the TK), Małgorzata Manowska, confirmed that she was among those interviewed by Ostrowski. Manowska is another PiS-era appointee whose status has been questioned by the current government.

She told broadcaster Radio Zet that, while she cannot reveal specifically what she told Ostrowski, she can say “generally” that the current government has “certainly broken the law” and is “dismantling the justice system, which will end badly for citizens”.

Figures linked to the current ruling camp have called for Ostrowski to be disciplined for mounting what they say is an illegal investigation.

Roman Giertych, an MP from Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO), announced last week that he and a group of party colleagues had submitted a request for Bodnar to suspend Ostrowski “for illegally initiating a private investigation”.

However, senior PiS figures have condemned today’s decision. “First, they mocked the investigation. Now they are frantically trying to block it,” wrote former PiS deputy justice minister Michał Woś. “The prosecutor’s office is a private tool of Tusk and Bodnar.”

“This decision is nothing short of an admission of guilt by Bodnar,” added Sebastian Kaleta, another former PiS deputy justice minister.

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: KPRM/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 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.