2024-11-14 12:52 update: 2024-11-15, 14:07
Fot. PAP/Tomasz Wiktor
Polish prosecutors are investigating potential irregularities in employing prisoners by the Golbalux company, owned by Mieczyslaw Golba, a senator with the former ruling party, the socially-conservative Law and Justice (PiS).
When it was in power, PiS introduced its flagship programme, 'Work for Prisoners,' which was meant to help rehabilitate inmates. It involved government subsidies to companies which organised such work for inmates.
The District Prosecutor's Office in Kielce has been running an investigation to verify potential irregularities at the prison in Rzeszow, southeastern Poland.
According to a report by the private broadcaster TVN24, Golba's company benefited from the programme.
"After inspections of the Central Administration of Prison Service, which was carried out in the Penitentiary in Rzeszow, because the senator comes from Rzeszow and it's where his company operates, and it was the Rzeszow prison that he had a contract with for the manufacturing of wooden homes, (it turned out that - PAP) according to the contract he was supposed to employ 600 prisoners, but the inspection showed that there are 30 employed," Maria Ejchart, a deputy justice minister, told Polish Radio One on Thursday.
Additionally, she said, Golbalux subcontracted a production hall it rented from the prison to another firm, which was a breach of the contract.
She said that the second firm "transported unidentified objects to the hall, which the inmates were then supposed to sort," adding that the inspection found that the packages delivered to the hall contained "dangerous objects" which prisoners should not have access to.
Ejchart said that the contract with Golbalux included "very beneficial terms for the company."
"We can't allow private firms to get rich on the 'Work for Prisoners' programme and public money," Ejchart said.
The Penitentiary in Rzeszow terminated the contract with Golbalux in July.
Senator Golba has said that the reports were 'manipulation'. (PAP)
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