Ryszard Czarnecki, a former vice-president of the European Parliament and member of Poland’s opposition Law and Justice party, has been charged with fraud allegedly committed during his time as an MEP.
If convicted of 243 counts of fraudulent travel claims, he could face a prison sentence of up to 15 years.
According to the prosecutors’ claims, Czarnecki falsely reported his residence to profit from reimbursements for travel expenses and as a result collected €203,000 between 2009 and 2013.
The investigation by Polish prosecutors into the alleged misappropriation of funds was initiated following a notification by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) in 2020 that questioned the validity of €100,000 reimbursed to Czarnecki for travel between 2009 and 2018.
Czarnecki allegedly misled the European Parliament when submitting his reimbursement claims, stating that he lived in Jasło in Southeastern Poland, when in reality he was living in Warsaw, some 340 kilometres closer to Brussels.
He can be charged with alleged offences by Poland’s public prosecutors without the need for them to seek the removal of parliamentary immunity as he is no longer an MEP.
The former MEP denies the charges and, speaking to commercial broadcaster Polsat, said he “categorically disagrees with these allegations,” and that they were the “execution of a political order given to the prosecutor’s office.”
“Two years ago, I returned all the funds in question, so I am surprised that this topic is still debated,” Czarnecki meanwhile told the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
“These irregularities with regard to the expense claims came about as a result of errors made by my staff, but I accept full responsibility.”
The prosecutor handling the case acknowledged that Czarnecki had returned more than €104,000, but told reporters that “repayment does not settle the matter.”
“It can at most have an impact on the sentence or on a possible obligation to make reparation. But it does not automatically cause depenalisation, meaning the person is no longer criminally responsible. These are two separate issues,” the prosecutor said.
Czarnecki served as a member of the European Parliament for 20 years. In 2014, he was elected as one of the parliament’s deputy presidents, a post from which he was removed in 2018.
That came after he called Liberal Polish MEP Róża Thun a “shmaltsovnik” — a derogatory term meaning a Pole who blackmailed Jews or those hiding them during the Holocaust — over her support for the European Commission’s sanctioning Poland for alleged rule-of-law violations.
The Donald Tusk-led Polish Government in January last year took over the public prosecutor’s office without fulfilling the legal obligation of being approved by President Andrzej Duda. It did so by alleging irregularities in the appointment of the previous national prosecutor and replacing him with an “acting national prosecutor,” despite the fact that the relevant legislation does not provide for such a status.
The country’s prosecutors have been publicly urged by Prime Minister Tusk and the Justice Minister Adam Bodnar to pursue all claims of allegedly unlawful actions by PiS politicians during the lifetime of the last PiS government (2015-2023).
Several indictments against former PiS ministers have been issued.
