2024-01-31 14:18 update: 2024-02-01, 15:13
Fot. PAP/Albert Zawada
Everything that occurred in the cash-for-visas scandal, starting from November 2022, was recorded by the security agencies, according to the chairman of the investigative commission into an affair that shook the Polish political scene last September.
Michal Szczerba, an MP from the governing Civic Coalition (KO) grouping and chairman of the commission, said in an interview with PAP Studio on Wednesday that the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the visa scandal would commence its work on February 6. He added that, at that time, the commission would present its work plan, the evidence collected and a list of witnesses.
The state commission is to investigate a visa scandal under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government that saw Polish consulates allegedly issuing thousands of visas in return for bribes.
Szczerba added that working meetings were already underway and committee members would have 129 volumes of files to read from the prosecutor's office, including twenty-or-so volumes of classified materials.
"These are also documents from operational inspections," he pointed out. "Starting more or less from November 2022, everything that took place around the visa scandal, dubbed 'the Wawrzyk scandal,' was recorded."
Former deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk is alleged to be the man behind the visa scam.
"It is a giant scandal that pertains not only to Wawrzyk and is contrary to the words of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski who said during the election campaign that 'it is not even a tiny scandal,'" said Szczerba. "This practice (of selling visas – PAP) was carried out in various places... and under various political sponsorship."
He confirmed that transfers of money by criminals to people, including those at the highest tiers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were recorded by the security agencies.
Poland's previous Law and Justice (PiS) government is battling a slew of allegations that its Foreign Ministry might have allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to come to Europe based on visas granted in a fast-track procedure without proper checks in exchange for payments to intermediaries.
The affair was a blow to PiS which made controlling immigration central to its campaign ahead of Poland's October 15 general election, which it eventually lost to a coalition of opposition parties. (PAP)
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