The Polish opposition Conservatives (PiS) have accused the country’s security services of leaking information from the files of Karol Nawrocki, the party’s presidential candidate, to discredit him.
Nawrocki, who is head of Poland’s Institute of Remembrance (IPN), requires security clearance issued by the security services because he is a state official, therefore they are obliged to investigate him.
On May 5, Liberal-leaning and German-owned news portal Onet.pl, which is supportive of the centre-left Polish Government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, alleged Nawrocki had concealed from the public the fact that he was the owner of two not one apartment, information that was not in the public domain.
The story refuted Nawrocki’s comments made during a recent presidential debate that he had just one property.
Emilia Wierzbicki, the spokesperson for the Nawrocki campaign, has claimed there were people working on leaks about her candidate originating from the security services.
“The current use of the apartment issue to attack Karol Nawrocki demonstrates that the special services have been engaged in a dirty campaign,” said Wierzbicki.
In a statement posted on social media, she emphasised that “all information regarding the properties owned by Karol Nawrocki has been disclosed in his financial declarations for years”.
She added that all the information was “submitted to the services responsible for issuing security clearance, and resulted in him being granted the highest levels of security classification”.
Prof Sławomir Cenckiewicz, who has written extensively on the history of Polish security services, told portal Niezależna.pl that the information came from a file relating to that security procedure and that the story “constituted a leak from the special services to the media”.
Wierzbicki said that Nawrocki had helped a lonely veteran to buy a property, the deeds of which were transferred to Nawrocki in return for the candidate taking care of the senior by paying the costs of utility bills, medication and groceries.
Although there was no evidence of Nawrocki having rented the apartment, Onet said it had discovered that the man in question was living in a care home rather than in the apartment owned by the PiS candidate.
Responding to this, Wierzbicki stated that Nawrocki had not had any contact with the senior since December of last year and could not find him.
Onet, though, claimed it took its reporters just a few hours to find the senior living in a publicly-funded care home.
During the current election campaign ahead of the presidential election due on May 18, Nawrocki has also been attacked for alleged links with the underworld during his time as an amateur boxer and security guard years ago.
The PiS candidate has hit back saying that constituted “guilt by association”, since he had no friendships with anyone in the underworld and only came across such individuals in the club at which he boxed.
He also pointed to the fact that if there had been anything in such stories, he would never have received security clearance.
