The government of Polish PM Donald Tusk has had to release a detained PiS former deputy justice minister after a court found the MP still had parliamentary immunity as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
Marcin Romanowski MP, who a minister in the last PiS, had his Polish parliamentary immunity lifted so he could be charged and arrested for alleged misappropriation of public funds.
A Warsaw court released Romanowski July 16 after his lawyers submitted documentation from the Council of Europe confirming his PACE immunity.
It was an embarrassment for Tusk’s justice minister Adam Bodnar, as it came only one day after Poland’s internal security agency (ABW) detained Romanowski using handcuffs in front of television cameras.
Romanowski had offered himself voluntarily for questioning by the public prosecutors on July 12, after Poland’s parliament voted to remove his parliamentary immunity.
Tusk’s own foreign minister Radosław Sikorski criticised the ABW’s involvement, saying the agency should concentrate on national security threats rather than charging politicians with alleged corruption.
Prosecutors allege Romanowski misappropriated money from the Justice Fund, an off-budget funding mechanism set up to help the victims of crime and facilitate measures to combat crime.
Tusk’s parliamentary party says the fund was misused to purchase Pegasus spyware and in public spending ahead of the election to help PiS candidates get elected.
The most serious charge facing Romanowski was that he was a part of “an organised criminal group”, a charge carrying up to 15 years in jail. He denied the accusations, saying he was target of a political witch-hunt.
One of Tusk’s allies, Roman Giertych MP, called Romanowski’s release “a total humiliation of the public prosecutors’ service”. Giertych says justice minister Bodnar had failed to cleanse the prosecutory service of former PiS appointees.
Former PM Mateusz Morawiecki called the manner of the arrest and mistakes made by the prosecutors “a major embarrassment to the Tusk government” and “a humiliation for Poland on the international stage”.
PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński said the actions of the Tusk government “would not be forgotten and that those responsible for this wave of lawlessness would be brought to account in the future”, suggesting they could face criminal charges and prison sentences.
Mariusz Błaszczak, leader of the PiS parliamentary caucus, warned his party would submit a vote of no confidence in justice minister Bodnar. This motion would be virtually certain to fail, as Tusk commands a majority in Poland’s parliament.
