Monday, June 09, 2003

Bribery Case Threatens Polish Government

The co-producer of Roman Polanski's The Pianist and Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List is to face trial in an incendiary corruption scandal that goes to the heart of government in Poland. Announcing the charges against Lew Rywin at the weekend, the prosecutor's office also announced it...

By Guardian Newspapers, 6/9/2003

The co-producer of Roman Polanski's The Pianist and Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List is to face trial in an incendiary corruption scandal that goes to the heart of government in Poland.

Announcing the charges against Lew Rywin at the weekend, the prosecutor's office also announced it was investigating why the prime minister, Leszek Miller, had hushed up the affair after learning about it almost a year ago. Mr Miller is deeply unpopular, running a minority government, and the scandal could be the final straw that brings it down.

Mr Rywin faces trial on charges of "paid protection", for allegedly acting as a middleman between the government and the country's most successful media business, offering amendments to a bill on media ownership in return for $17.5m (Ј10.5m).

The case involves some of the most influential figures in Poland. It prompted a parliamentary investigation, live coverage of which has attracted record viewing figures.

The prosecutor's office charged Mr Rywin after questioning more than 70 witnesses.

He is one of the biggest names in the Polish film industry, co-producing the acclaimed Polanski and Spielberg Oscar-winners.

Last summer he approached the publishers of the independent Polish-owned Gazeta Wyborcza, the country's best-selling daily newspaper, offering his services in a bitter row over a media bill that would keep the national press out of the television market.

Adam Michnik, the former dissident and Solidarity leader who is the editor of Gazeta, met Mr Rywin last July and secretly taped a conversation in which the film producer named Mr Miller, said he was operating on behalf of the cabinet and offered amendments to the bill in return for a payment of $17.5m.

Mr Michnik told Mr Miller of the approach and the three men had a meeting. Under Polish law, the prime minister was obliged to inform the police or prosecutor's office of the alleged bribery attempt. He did not, later saying that the case was"absurd", and that Mr Rywin was "psychotic".
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Sunday, June 01, 2003

From the June 2003 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 50, No. 6)
Europe
Poland: Paper Chase

Marcin Hadaj

Rywingate, also known as the Rywin scandal or Rywin affair, is Poland’s most serious corruption scandal in a decade. Involving efforts by a film mogul to bribe the editor of Poland’s most popular newspaper, it reveals flaws in democratic rule just as the country is set to join the European Union.

As the story goes, in the summer of 2002, Lew Rywin, the producer of Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning movie The Pianist, solicited a bribe of $17.5 million from former dissident and Gazeta Wyborcza editor Adam Michnik in exchange for amendments to a media bill that would have enabled the paper’s parent company, Agora, to enter the television business. Rywin claimed to be speaking for people in the ruling Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). Though Michnik taped his conversations, he did not publicly acknowledge them until his paper broke the story in December, claiming that he sought to salvage Poland’s bid to join the E.U. by delaying until after the Copenhagen summit the same month. Prime Minister Leszek Miller, a friend of Rywin, and President Aleksander Kwasniewski were said to be aware of the shakedown, but they, too, remained silent until news of the bribery became public.

In January, Parliament set up a commission to investigate the scandal, but the prime minister and president have yet to tes-tify before it. So far, the scandal’s namesake has come off better than almost everyone else involved in the matter. As Marcin Prezwozniak noted in Warsaw's independent weekly Zycie Warszawy on Feb. 24, “The producer’s lawyers were triumphant. Their client did not answer one single question, taking advantage of his right to refuse testimony.” President Kwasniewski, a founder of the SLD, has sought to distance himself from Miller, pointing to the prime minister’s, rather than his own, failure to turn to prosecutors.

Janina Paradowska, writing in Warsaw's independent weekly Polityka (April 5), noted the irony of the president’s moralizing on how the country’s elites had allowed lines between state and business to blur. “In truth, there was grumbling within the SLD that the president had gone too far, because he himself was an important co-creator of this intermingling.” Lukasz Perzyna, in an article in Warsaw's centrist Rzeczpospolita titled “Disaster in Installments” (April 4), observed that the war in Iraq allowed the prime minister and president to stand tall briefly before Rywingate reared its ugly head. “Leszek Miller clearly seems to be finished as prime minister. Is he also finished as a party leader? He is putting up a strong fight with Aleksander Kwasniewski.” If Miller stepped down, Perzyna noted, “only Kwasniewski could be the architect of a new order—within the SLD or as overseer of a cabinet.” In Warsaw's conservative weekly Gazeta Polska, Anita Gargas claimed that “the Rywin affair is very dangerous for the SLD,” citing Justice Minister Grzegorz Kurczuk’s warning of permanent harm to the party (April 2).

The parliamentary investigative commission has proved to be a test of Polish democracy. A record 86,000 viewers tuned in to the commission’s first hearing on the all-news TVN 24 channel.
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