Poland’s former president Kwasniewski under scutiny

Poland’s largest opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS), will be motioning for the creation of a parliamentary committee to investigate the assets of Poland’s former president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, the Polish media reported in mid-June.

”A motion to set up such a parliamentary committee should be submitted to a very thorough debate,” one of the foremost, members of the ruling PO party, Grzegorz Schetyna, told Polsat News on June 12, as quoted by Rzezpospolita. “The arguments raised by Mariusz Kaminski are very serious. I do not exclude [the possibility] that the prosecution failed in this case, that the discontinuation [of the investigation into Kwasniewski] should not have occurred.”

Mariusz Kaminski is currently the head deputy of Poland’s largest opposition party, PiS. While PiS was in power in 2007, he acted as head of the Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA). The prosecution requested that his immunity be lifted so it could charge him for alleged abuse of power from the time he headed the CBA. At the time, Kaminski approved an undercover operation whose aim was to prove that Kwasniewski evaded taxes.

The investigation was dropped amid controversy over legalities of the operation phase of the investigation. The prosecution claimed that Kaminski agreed to planting wiretaps that were not approved by the court, and that he allegedly also falsified evidence, as well as provided false testimony in court.

In a non-public June 10 vote, Polish Parliament decided not to lift Mariusz Kaminski’s immunity. Shortly afterwards PiS announced that it would submit an application to the parliament requesting that it brings to life a committee to investigate Kwasniewski’s assets.