Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has vowed to pursue former government officials for their alleged “illegal spending” while in office.
The Liberal leader has claimed that audits examining public spending between 2016 and 2023 under the former Conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) government have identified spending of €23 billion from 2015-2023, which he said raises “suspicions the funds were spent illegally.”
At a press conference in Warsaw on August 9, Tusk accused the former government of creating a “closed system” that used state money “for its own political and financial benefit.”
Such cash, he said, was used to pay for election campaigns, foundations linked to PiS politicians, and pro-PiS media outlets.
Tusk pledged that his government would seek to “catch all those who abused power and robbed the Polish State” and, where possible, recover the money, or that of the beneficiaries of the allegedly illegal spending. He noted that 62 former officials have already been accused of misdemeanours, with a further 149 notifications of alleged criminal activity submitted to prosecutors
“This is the first time in the history of Poland that government officials have been held accountable so quickly and effectively,” the PM said.
He did acknowledge that, as yet, there had been no actual court rulings against PiS officials for misappropriation of public funds, though maintained that “PiS ministers and deputy ministers who were candidates in elections concentrated State funds in their districts.”
He also revealed that his current ministers of justice, the interior and finance have signed an agreement on “co-ordinating activities… aimed at disclosing, securing and recovering property owed to the state treasury” and on working to prevent future abuses.
Tusk did not explain why it was felt that an agreement had to be signed to get ministers to carry out their constitutional duties of protecting State property and funds.
When his coalition government came to power in December last year, one of its central promises was to hold the former PiS administration to account for various alleged abuses.
The most prominent of these investigations has centred around the so-called Justice Fund, meant to counteract crime and support victims, as having been allegedly used as a means to financially support election campaigns.
The investigation has so far led to the stripping of immunity from two former deputy justice ministers and the issuing of indictments for misuse of public funds.
PiS denied the allegations against it, claiming it was being targeted in a political witch hunt by Tusk’s government and that there was no evidence of the law having been broken. It has argued that all governments make decisions on where to prioritise expenditure, adding that all its public spending was to the benefit of Polish society.
Former PiS prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki on August 9 took to X to accuse Tusk of spreading lies and claimed that the current PM’s real objective was “to eliminate the largest opposition party in Poland”.
He was referring to the fact that the government has been petitioning the State Electoral Commission, the body responsible for approving the payment of State funds to political parties, to stop the further funding for PiS on the grounds that it had abused public coffers.
PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński told a press conference on August 10 that Tusk had “lied to get into power” during the autumn 2023 parliamentary elections and, since arriving in office, has been “abusing power to an unprecedented extent.”
At the same press conference, Kaczyński announced that PiS had launched a website allowing people to anonymously report cases of the government violating the law.
The PiS has already accused the Tusk government of an illegal takeover of public media and the public prosecutor’s office as well as illegally removing judges appointed by President Andrzej Duda.
Tusk’s offensive against PiS politicians is the first time in the political history of the modern Polish State that such a raft of allegations and indictments has been fired by one government at the officials of its predecessor.
