Money from FS was intended for support of crime victims and their families and for addressing the root causes of the crime. Adam Bodnar, Poland's new justice minister and prosecutor general,
established an investigative team at the National Prosecutor’s Office in late January to scrutinize how the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government had spent money from the FS.
Current evidence shows that the
Pegasus surveillance spyware was used by the former government to spy not only on their political opponents, but allies as well, and
was purchased from, among other sources, FS.
During his speech, Kwiatkowski presented the results of
NIK’s annual budget audit, which included examining the expenditure of funds from the Justice Fund. Auditors requested bank statements from the separate account managing the Justice Fund, reports on the execution of Justice Fund tasks, documents confirming incurred expenses, as well as invoices confirming the expenditure of funds by the final beneficiary.
The senator presented a copy of the NBP account, documenting the transfer of financial resources from the Justice Fund to the CBA. The funds were transferred in two installments, totaling PLN 25 mln.
These funds went to the
Matic company for the implementation of the
“purchase of special technical equipment for detecting and preventing crime,” explained Kwiatkowski. The contract is dated October 3, 2017.
Two payments
The first installment, amounting to PLN 13.360.000 (EUR 3.1 mln), was fully settled from a special account created for this purpose using funds transferred by the Ministry of Justice. The description of the second invoice - for PLN 11,640,000 (EUR 2.7 mln) indicates, according to Kwiatkowski,
that during this time the company had already delivered the Pegasus system for use by the CBA.
The witness also showed documents in which both the CBA and the Ministry of Justice confirmed receipt of PLN 25 mln from the Justice Fund on January 23, 2018. A document from the Ministry’s Department of Family and Juvenile Affairs dated February 19, 2018, indicates that the agreement with the CBA was settled in full on February 15, 2018. The document was signed by the then director of the department and Deputy Minister of Justice, Michał Woś.
The former NIK president presented a letter from the head of the CBA dated September 18, 2017, addressed to the Minister of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro. The minister’s office stamp is visible on it. According to Kwiatkowski,
the stamp decisively indicates that the letter was received by the minister’s office, and the Minister of Justice is obligated to review mail addressed to him.
The letter reads: “Referring to previous agreements (...), I am requesting the transfer to the CBA (...) of the agreed amount for the purpose of implementing the task of purchasing
special technical equipment for detecting and preventing crime.”
Kwiatkowski pointed out that the law had changed in the meantime. “The scope of tasks of the Justice Fund was expanded to include
financing tasks related to detecting and preventing crime.”
He continued on, that the letter from the Minister of Justice reached Deputy Minister Woś on September 19, 2017, and was then forwarded to the Department of Family and Juvenile Affairs.
It was sent not only from the CBA to the Ministry of Justice but also to the then head of the Ministry of Interior and Administration, Mariusz Kamiński,
as confirmed by the annotation contained in the letter.
Woś’s letter dated October 6, 2017, addressed to the director of the administrative and financial office, Jarosław Wyżgowski, reads: “In connection with the implementation of a non-public contract (...) I am requesting the disbursement of funds. Furthermore, I inform you that the above-mentioned
funds have been included in the Justice Fund’s financial plan for 2017.”
Kwiatkowski stated that this agreement
could not have been non-public. “These documents are public, accessible
not only to NIK auditors but to any citizen who would apply to the Minister of Justice, as he has a statutory obligation to provide access to this information,” emphasized the witness.
Decisions made by Woś
The witness pointed out that the budget is adopted in the
year preceding the budget year and, under justified circumstances, may be shifted to the first months of the given year. “But it is difficult to speak of an expenditure
whose initiative arose in the second half of the year being included in the plan for that year,” he emphasized.
According to another document, the confirmation of the transfer of funds took place on October 9, 2017. “This is confirmation that the Deputy Minister Woś was informed of the entire financial operation
and made decisions, as evidenced by his signature,” said the former NIK president.
Violation of public finance discipline
Summarizing, after the audit in the Ministry of Justice, NIK assessed that there had been a
violation of public finance discipline in the department, by way of “Woś acting contrary to the authorization granted by the Minister of Finance (...) made a decision resulting in the transfer of PLN 25 million to the CBA for tasks other than those resulting from this authorization, and despite the fact that this unit can only be funded by state budget funds,” as stated in the opinion.
According to the witness, this document explicitly states that there had been a violation of the law.
Series of arrests
Since Tuesday morning, officials from the Internal Security Agency (ABW) have been arresting people and searching dozens of properties in connection with alleged abuses in the disbursement of money from the Justice Fund, which was established to provide support for victims of crime by the Justice Ministry under the leadership of former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro.
“The material we already have has made it possible to charge five people. The prosecutor informed them of the charges yesterday and today,” spokesman for the National Public Prosecutor’s Office Przemysław Nowak said.
“These are four officials from the Ministry of Justice, from the Department of the Justice Fund, and one representative of a beneficiary, the Profeto Foundation,” he added.
