2024-07-23 14:59 update: 2024-07-23, 15:03
Fot. PAP/Marcin Obara
A former Polish deputy justice minister, Marcin Romanowski, has notified the public prosecutor's office of the possibility that Justice Minister Adam Bodnar, among others, had committed a crime in the course of executing legal action against him.
Romanowski, a deputy justice minister in Poland's former Law and Justice (PiS) government, is currently facing 11 charges, including misuse of public funds.
He was arrested on June 15, pending a court decision on his pre-trial detention, but was released on the following day.
After the release, Romanowski said the reason for the court's decision to let him go was his parliamentary immunity, as he is a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
In his notice to the public prosecutor’s office, he names the prosecutors investigating the Justice Fund case, which he is tied to. He alleges that they exceeded their powers and unlawfully deprived him of his liberty.
"Together with attorney Bartosz Lewandowski, I submitted a notification to the public prosecutor’s office on the possibility of an offence being committed by the Minister of Justice Adam Bodnar, the illegal National Prosecutor Dariusz Korneluk, the Deputy Minister Arkadiusz Myrcha and the prosecutors comprising Investigation Team No. 2 in connection with the exceeding of powers and unlawful deprivation of liberty," Romanowski wrote on the X platform on Tuesday.
Lewandowski added in turn that the decision to detain Romanowski was taken "in spite of the warnings that came from the Council of Europe bodies in June of this year."
Romanowski is accused of having committed 11 crimes while in office, including granting unlawful subsidies from the justice ministry's Justice Fund, a special reserve originally designed to help victims of crime which, according to the prosecution, was used to finance party interests by politicians from PiS's junior coalition partner, Sovereign Poland. According to the charges, the money was used for various unrelated purchases that were meant to increase support for Sovereign Poland politicians in their respective constituencies.
His release is a blow to the new coalition government led by Donald Tusk, which is determined to bring to justice a number of former PiS politicians who are accused of breaking the law. In another landmark case, a former interior minister and his deputy were pardoned by President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, after a court sentenced them to two years in prison for abuse of power. (PAP)
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