Poland’s former deputy anti-corruption chief charged in Pegasus spyware probe

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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.

The former deputy head of Poland’s Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA) has been charged with unlawfully sharing material obtained through surveillance using Pegasus spyware, including communication involving Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s daughter when Tusk was in opposition.

The development is the latest step in a long-running investigation into the purchase and use of Pegasus under the former Law and Justice (PiS) government, which is accused of using the powerful Israel-made spyware tool to spy on opposition-linked figures.

On Wednesday, the National Prosecutor’s Office announced that the former deputy head of the CBA, who can be named only as Daniel K. under Polish privacy law, had been charged with abuse of power and unlawfully disclosing information. Those crimes each carry prison sentences of up to three years.

Prosecutors say that, on 8 July 2020, Daniel K. passed 15 DVDs containing surveillance material on Roman Giertych, a lawyer who had represented Tusk and members of his family, to Bogdan Święczkowski, who was at the time national prosecutor under the then-ruling PiS government.

Separately, prosecutors are also seeking to bring charges against Święczkowski, who is now chief justice of the Constitutional Tribunal (TK), over the same issue. However, the TK earlier this month rejected a request to lift Święczkowski’s legal immunity.

Prosecutors say that the files Daniel K. passed to Święczkowski contained material covered by client-attorney privilege, which he was not legally allowed to share.

“These materials should not have left the CBA because they contained [legal] defence secrets that cannot be used…[and] they should have been destroyed,” said Przemysław Nowak, spokesman for the National Prosecutor’s Office, quoted by news website Interia.

Nowak also confirmed that “one of the people whose right to confidentiality of contact with a lawyer was violated was Katarzyna Tusk”, the daughter of Donald Tusk.

On Tuesday, Donald Tusk himself had announced that both his daughter and his wife, Małgorzata, had been subject to surveillance using Pegasus. Prosecutors also confirmed then that Katarzyna had been granted victim status in their investigation into the use of Pegasus.

Pegasus, which allows the monitoring and harvesting of data from mobile devices, was purchased by the CBA in 2017, when PiS was in power. Over the following five years, it was used against around 600 people, including some political opponents of PiS, according to the current government, which replaced PiS in 2023.

One of the figures targeted for surveillance was Giertych, who was at the time a lawyer with close ties to Tusk, including representing him, his son Michał, and daughter Katarzyna in legal cases. Giertych is now an MP in Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO).

In June this year, PiS-linked media outlets leaked recordings of a 2019 phone call between Donald Tusk and Giertych, which appears to have been made using Pegasus.

Giertych this week told news website Onet that the use of Pegasus against him “was aimed solely at gathering information about these people, some of whom were important figures from the perspective of the opposition at the time”.

However, PiS figures have argued that Giertych was legitimately targeted in an investigation into his alleged role in money laundering relating to a company called Poldnord. In 2020, he was detained and charged in relation to that case. Earlier this year, prosecutors dropped the charges against him.

PiS argues that, even if Tusk or members of his family were recorded as part of the surveillance of Giertych, it happened incidentally and because they were in contact with someone being investigated over serious alleged crimes.

Separately, prosecutors under the current government have also alleged that the PiS government’s original purchase of Pegasus was conducted unlawfully. Earlier this week, a former PiS deputy justice minister was indicted over his role in that.

PiS rejects those accusations, arguing that Pegasus was purchased lawfully and that it was used for legitimate purposes, to investigate those suspected of corruption and other offences.

It claims that Tusk’s government is now pursuing cases in relation to Pegasus as an act of “political revenge” because figures linked to the current ruling camp were the subject of such investigations.

Last year, Tusk also announced plans to abolish the CBA, saying that under PiS it had been “practically inactive” in fighting corruption and was instead mainly used to pursue opposition-linked figures. Earlier this month, a draft law to liquidate the CBA was submitted to parliament.

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: CBA/X

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.