Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said former Conservative (PiS) justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who has been indicted on 26 counts and given asylum in Hungary, has effectively “admitted guilt”.
Speaking at a press conference on yesterday, Tusk said seeking protection abroad was tantamount to an admission of wrongdoing and represented an attempt to avoid facing Polish courts.
He slammed Budapest for granting asylum to Ziobro and claimed Poland, unlike Hungary, is recognised as a “safe and law abiding country” in which “no citizen should feel compelled to seek political asylum”.
Tusk revealed that he had not discussed the Ziobro asylum case with the Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He said he was awaiting the official response from the Hungarian Government while talking to opposition figures in Hungary. He claims they promised him that a future change of government in Budapest would mean a change of status for Ziobro.
Earlier, Ziobro’s attorney Bartosz Lewandowski announced that the former minister had been granted international protection and political asylum in Hungary. He cited alleged violations of rights and freedoms in Poland and said Ziobro had received a travel document under the Geneva Convention to allow the former minister to move freely.
Tusk compared Ziobro’s asylum to the case of a former judge who fled to Minsk in May 2024 and is wanted in Poland on espionage charges. According to the Polish PM, both men had abused power and had betrayed Poland’s national interests by aligning themselves with “allies of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin”.
In fact, the judge Tusk referred to, Tadeusz Szmydt, had become ensnared by the Belarusian secret services following his financial problem. He fled to Belarus as he suspected the authorities were becoming aware of his activities on behalf of Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime.
There has been no suggestion or evidence that Ziobro has been serving any foreign power
Meanwhile, the Polish Government is continuing its legal action for Polish courts to sanction Ziobro’s detention. That is due to concerns the ex-minister could obstruct the investigation into his alleged wrongdoing. That court action has now been delayed twice due to the prosecution failing to provide all the documentation the court and the former minister’s defence attorneys asked for.
Some 26 indictments have been filed against Ziobro. If he is found guilty of the charges he could face up to 30 years in prison.
He is indicted for his role in administering the Justice Fund, a state financial vehicle designated for helping the victims of crime and the prevention of crime.
The ex-minister is accused of having misused the fund for political purposes. He is alleged to have been running an “organised crime group” in the ministry for the purposes of the siphoning-off of funds to enhance political campaigns of his allies. He is also suspected of spying on the opposition via the allegedly illegal purchase of the Israeli spyware Pegasus.
Ziobro maintains his innocence, arguing that all proper procedures had been followed with regard to the disbursement of funds and that Pegasus was used to investigate hundreds of cases of suspected crimes with only a minority involving liberal politicians.
It is a fact, though, that the leader of the opposition Conservatives (PiS) Jarosław Kaczyński had, ahead of the general election in 2019, written to Ziobro warning against using the Justice Fund in a way that could be construed to be funding election campaigns of Ziobro’s political allies.
At the time, Ziobro headed the small party Solidarity Poland. That was in electoral alliance with PiS and had been in dispute with it over funding for its own candidates from money allocated to PiS from the state budget.
Ziobro and his allies also often clashed with the then-PiS prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki over the latter, in Ziobro’s view, being too accommodating towards European institutions during the rule of law dispute between the then-Polish government and Brussels.
Ziobro had his parliamentary immunity lifted in November of last year after he had left Poland to stay in Hungary. There, together with his wife, he was granted political asylum on the grounds that he would not have been able to face a fair trial in Poland.
His deputy Marcin Romanowski MP was also granted political asylum in Hungary when facing similar charges in late 2024.
At the time, Orbán criticised the centre-left Polish Government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk for attempting political purges of the PiS opposition and said he suspected more asylum cases would follow.
The Tusk government has made no secret of the fact it wants to bring former PiS state officials to what the government maintains would be justice. He had been urged to do so in 2024 to “counter future populist resurgence” by bodies such as the USAID’s National Endowment for Democracy. Anne Applebaum, the wife of Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski, sat as a board member of that group until 2025.
Poland is seeking to apply for a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) for Ziobro’s detention. Since the New Year, though, legislation has come into force in Hungary that forbids the country from honouring EAWs in cases of asylum having been granted to individuals by the country.
Ziobro has stated he would remain abroad until “real guarantees of the rule of law are restored in Poland” and that he chooses to “fight against political banditry and lawlessness”.
He added that he would not resign from his parliamentary mandate and would continue to campaign against the Tusk government.
Ziobro’s flight to Hungary has been met with mixed reactions among his PiS colleagues.
Publicly they have stated that he had little choice as he was not likely to face a fair trial in present circumstances and because he has been suffering from cancer of the esophagus since late 2023. In private, though, some admit that Ziobro leaving for Budapest makes the party politically vulnerable and Ziobro himself look weak.
Morawiecki has said he would not follow Ziobro’s example and will not flee the country after being indicted. That was for allegedly illegally preparing for an aborted postal ballot for the Polish presidency during the pandemic of 2020.
The PiS-aligned President Karol Nawrocki has said that while he understands there is little chance of a fair trial for Ziobro in Poland, he cannot as the head of state encourage people to flee the country.
