Polish police chief resigns

The chief of Poland's police force has resigned following accusations linking him to a political corruption scandal involving the country's ruling party.

Commander General Antoni Kowalczyk is the latest high-level victim of the affair which has already forced the resignation of Poland's Deputy Interior Minister Zbigniew Sobotka.

The scandal centres on accusations that ruling party councillors in the small town of Starachowice - suspected of links with a criminal gang - were warned about a planned police raid on themselves and the gang.

Commander Kowalczyk came under increasing pressure to resign following revelations he changed his testimony in the scandal.

Poland's interior minister, Krzysztof Janik, survived a parliamentary vote of no-confidence on Wednesday after being accused by the opposition party of being central to the affair.

Poland's Prime Minister, Leszek Miller, called the vote "an unnecessary waste of energy on the part of parliament," Reuters news agency reported.

Chain

Mr Kowalczyk's superior, Zbigniew Sobotka, resigned following similar accusations, three weeks ago.


The Polish police force has long been accused of corruption
Andrzej Jagiello, another deputy belonging to the same party, was said to have tipped the gangsters off about a planned police operation against them in a telephone call, which police recorded.

Mr Jagiello had said during the conversation he had been informed by Mr Sobotka.

He has since been charged and stripped of his parliamentary immunity.

The BBC's correspondent in Warsaw, Adam Easton, said the story has dominated the nation's headlines for months.

"In March this year, police raided a gang in Starachowice, 100 kilometres (62 miles) south of the capital, Warsaw, suspected of stealing cars," he said.

"Local councillors from the country's ruling Democratic Left Alliance, known as SLD, were also suspected of having connections to the gang."

Warning

Poland's police chief at first said he had not passed on information about the raid to Mr Sobotka.

Then the country's parliament heard he later changed his evidence admitting he had.

Earlier this month, prosecutors charged Mr Sobotka with divulging state secrets, obstructing justice and endangering the lives of the police officers.

Mr Sobotka denies passing on information to a local SLD politician who allegedly tipped off the councillors.

The scandal has once again revealed how deep the culture of corruption runs in Polish politics.

Prime Minister Miller has promised to crack down on political sleaze, but Mr Miller is already the most unpopular leader since the fall of the Communists in 1989, following a string of corruption scandals and rising unemployment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3225521.stm

Polish interior minister survives confidence motion

WARSAW, Oct 29 (AFP) - Poland's Interior Minister Krzysztof Janik on Wednesday survived a vote of no-confidence after being accused by the parliamentary opposition of being responsible for a damaging corruption scandal involving top politicians and organised crime.
The motion, the 11th in two years against a minister in the leftist government of Prime Minister Leszek Miller, was rejected by 216 to 204, with seven deputies abstaining in the 460-seat lower house of parliament.

The vote came after police chief, General Antoni Kowalczyk, earlier resigned and was promptly replaced after being implicated in a corruption affair involving politicians, organised crime and the government.

Kowalczyk, who had been police chief for two years, was replaced by Leszek Szreder, 49, police chief in the northern town of Gdansk.

Kowalczyk has been accused of a dubious role in an affair involving links between officials of the ruling Social Democratic Party (SLD) and gangsters in Starachowice, an industrial town in central Poland.

His head was the latest to roll in the affair, after deputy Polish Interior Minister Zbigniew Sobotka was charged last month with causing a leak which led to the tipping off of two gangsters about a planned police swoop.

The scandal around Sobotka, who is close to Miller, blew up in July when the press revealed mafia-style links of SLD party officials at Starachowice.

Another SLD deputy, Andrzej Jagiello, is said to have tipped off the gangsters of a planned police operation against them. In the telephone call, which was recorded by the police, Jagiello said he had been informed by Sobotka.

Jagiello has already been charged and been stripped of his parliamentary immunity.

Story from AFP
Copyright 2003 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)

POLISH EDITOR SAYS HE WAS 'MANIPULATED' IN RYWINGATE.

"Gazeta Wyborcza" Editor in Chief Adam Michnik on 22 October told the parliamentary commission investigating the so-called Rywingate bribery scandal that he "allowed [myself] to be manipulated" in the scandal, Polish Television reported. Michnik was commenting on the information from the commission that on 16 July 2002, a day after Lew Rywin allegedly solicited a bribe from Agora (the publisher of "Gazeta Wyborcza"), the government was scheduled to discuss a media-law amendment that was favorable to Agora. According to the commission, Michnik's call to Premier Leszek Miller on 15 July 2002 asking the latter to postpone the discussion of the amendment (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 22 October 2003) prompted the removal of the amendment from the government's agenda. Michnik did not say whom he is suspecting of the manipulation, but he noted that his call to Miller was prompted by a request from then-Deputy Culture Minister Aleksandra Jakubowska that Agora or Michnik suggest postponing the discussion on the amendment to Miller. Some Polish media have speculated that Jakubowska might have belonged to the "group in power" to which film producer Rywin referred when allegedly soliciting a bribe from Agora.

Link

Poland's Corruption Record
16 October 2003

Poland is losing its war on corruption. Such a conclusion can be drawn from the latest annual report by Transparency International, an international organization monitoring corruption in individual countries. For at least two years, Poland's corruption record has been deteriorating consistently. The latest TI report shows that Poland has become the most corrupt state of all 15 European Union member and nine candidate states covered by the survey. A similar conclusion may be included in the annual report of the European Commission on the candidate countries' progress in adapting to EU standards. The report is expected to criticize Poland for rising corruption, and the Polish government may take flak for insufficient efforts to contain such practices.

Voice readers, alas, almost every week discover the details of one corruption scandal or another, or an affair which stirs politics and crime. This issue is no exception-it carries further details on a probe mounted by a special Sejm commission into "Rywingate," the number one scandal of the past year (see page 6). We also provide further information on the backstage workings of a scandal involving Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) deputies from Starachowice, the alleged accomplices of local gangsters, and their supposed mentors in the highest echelons of power.

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former president of France now presiding over the European Convention, has lost his warm feelings for Poland. In a French radio interview, far too frank for a politician, he made a statement that raised indignation first in Madrid and later in Warsaw. He suggested that the amendments urged by the Convention to the EU's future Constitution Treaty (a move away from the rules agreed on at the December 2000 EU summit in Nice regarding the division of votes in the future Union) simply resulted from a desire to limit the influence of Spain and in the future-Poland. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and his Polish counterpart Leszek Miller both expressed surprise and then indignation over Giscard d'Estaing's comments. Talks on a potential compromise on the future EU constitution have become even more difficult, and the Polish public has learned another painful lesson regarding France's position toward Poland as a future partner in the EU.

The Poles, on the other hand, have lost their warm feelings for Sweden. This chiefly applies to the male section of the Polish population, especially those gung-ho on soccer. The Polish national team's win in an away match against Hungary, the last match in the qualifying round for Euro 2004, did not help the team qualify. In another match played at the same time in Stockholm, Sweden were beaten by Latvia, even though the Swedes had not lost a World Cup or European Championship qualifying game for six years. For Latvia, the victory meant participation in the playoffs. Anyone who watched the pitiful performance of the Swedes may have wondered if the result was not set before the referee's first whistle.

The only good news this week is that Polish food has a chance to prosper in EU markets after Polish accession to the Union. Rumors that the 15 EU countries might seek to block food imports from the current candidate countries in one way or another have proven unfounded.

Link

Poland's Corruption Record
16 October 2003

Poland is losing its war on corruption. Such a conclusion can be drawn from the latest annual report by Transparency International, an international organization monitoring corruption in individual countries. For at least two years, Poland's corruption record has been deteriorating consistently. The latest TI report shows that Poland has become the most corrupt state of all 15 European Union member and nine candidate states covered by the survey. A similar conclusion may be included in the annual report of the European Commission on the candidate countries' progress in adapting to EU standards. The report is expected to criticize Poland for rising corruption, and the Polish government may take flak for insufficient efforts to contain such practices.

Voice readers, alas, almost every week discover the details of one corruption scandal or another, or an affair which stirs politics and crime. This issue is no exception-it carries further details on a probe mounted by a special Sejm commission into "Rywingate," the number one scandal of the past year (see page 6). We also provide further information on the backstage workings of a scandal involving Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) deputies from Starachowice, the alleged accomplices of local gangsters, and their supposed mentors in the highest echelons of power.

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former president of France now presiding over the European Convention, has lost his warm feelings for Poland. In a French radio interview, far too frank for a politician, he made a statement that raised indignation first in Madrid and later in Warsaw. He suggested that the amendments urged by the Convention to the EU's future Constitution Treaty (a move away from the rules agreed on at the December 2000 EU summit in Nice regarding the division of votes in the future Union) simply resulted from a desire to limit the influence of Spain and in the future-Poland. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and his Polish counterpart Leszek Miller both expressed surprise and then indignation over Giscard d'Estaing's comments. Talks on a potential compromise on the future EU constitution have become even more difficult, and the Polish public has learned another painful lesson regarding France's position toward Poland as a future partner in the EU.

The Poles, on the other hand, have lost their warm feelings for Sweden. This chiefly applies to the male section of the Polish population, especially those gung-ho on soccer. The Polish national team's win in an away match against Hungary, the last match in the qualifying round for Euro 2004, did not help the team qualify. In another match played at the same time in Stockholm, Sweden were beaten by Latvia, even though the Swedes had not lost a World Cup or European Championship qualifying game for six years. For Latvia, the victory meant participation in the playoffs. Anyone who watched the pitiful performance of the Swedes may have wondered if the result was not set before the referee's first whistle.

The only good news this week is that Polish food has a chance to prosper in EU markets after Polish accession to the Union. Rumors that the 15 EU countries might seek to block food imports from the current candidate countries in one way or another have proven unfounded.

Link