Poland’s internal security service (ABW) spokesman has gone on the record to state that several years ago the service investigated opposition Conservative (PiS) presidential election candidate Karol Nawrocki over the purchase of an apartment in Gdańsk.
The ABW spokesman said that one of the investigating operatives recommended that the PiS candidate not be granted security clearance.
On May 27, interior ministry spokesman Jacek Dobrzyński issued a statement in which he “confirmed that the ABW collected documentation regarding the sources of funding for the purchase of an apartment”.
He was referring to the fact that Nawrocki acquired a previously local-government owned apartment from a senior citizen on the basis of an agreement of due care and had since been accused of having failed to carry out his side of the bargain.
Dobrzyński then claimed that ABW officials from the previous PiS government had taken a decision to give Nawrocki, who heads up the National Institute of Remembrance (IPN), a body responsible for investigating German Nazi and Communist-era crimes, security clearance despite opposition from one of the investigators.
Dobrzyński did not mention that Nawrocki had been checked by the security services in order to obtain a certificate entitling him to have access to sensitive information as early as 2009 and then in 2014, a period when Poland was governed by current Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
He also failed to explain why the security services and the ministry of interior had not taken any action against Nawrocki in the past 18 months when Tusk had returned as PM at the head of the present ruling centre-left coalition.
Tusk reacted immediately to Dobrzyński’s remarks by posting on X that “an investigator from Gdańsk who had looked into Nawrocki’s situation had issued a negative opinion and for no good reason the PiS’s people chose to disregard that”.
“I note that the ABW head at the time now works as an adviser of [PiS-aligned] President Andrzej Duda”.
MP Roman Giertych of Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO) party, who is also the PM’s family lawyer, then announced that a group he chaired inside the ruling party would file a case with the prosecutor against the ABW officials involved for allegedly “certifying access to secret information to a person who has connections to the underworld”.
He was referring to allegations that Nawrocki had contacts with criminals at a boxing club he attended and that later he was involved in fights between rival football fans.
Historian Sławomir Cenckiewicz, who has researched the work of the security services, told Brussels Signal he had previously warned that the services would become involved in the election campaign.
“These revelations by Dobrzyński merely confirm what I said nearly two months ago that the security services are interfering in this election by leaking information against Nawrocki,” he said.
“It’s a scandal, and Dobrzyński is contradicting himself as a few days ago he had told reporters that the ABW had not attempted to revoke the PiS candidate’s security clearance.”
Duda’s security adviser Stanisław Żaryn reacted to Tusk’s X post by alluding to the fact that, on May 26, the PM had on TV relied on the testimony of an MMA fighter and felon who had cited rumours about Nawrocki.
“Yesterday, Tusk put his trust in a convicted felon rather than the ABW. Today he involves the ABW in the election campaign,” Żaryn said on May 27.
Bartosz Lewandowski, an attorney who has defended several PiS politicians indicted by the Tusk government, mocked the situation, saying: “All that is missing now is for the authorities to detain the PiS presidential candidate so the curtain falls on democracy in our pleasant land.”
