Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said that the surgeon who alleges that the work of a young doctor who was a prominent activist in the ruling Civic Coalition led to patients’ deaths was not a credible witness and warned that those guilty of defamation will be punished.
Tusk’s remarks came in a platform X post on June 24 just hours after the PM had said he was not going to get involved in disputes between doctors and on the same day that the public prosecutors called in the whistleblower surgeon to testify as a witness but would not allow the doctor to appoint an attorney to be present at the interrogation.
The affair after an investigation published by portal zero.pl on June 15 alleged showed that Dawid Kacprzyk, a 29-year-old doctor without specialized training, earned nearly 400,000 Euro last year as head of the Accident and Emergency unit and within it operated a special service for Tusk’s ruling party politicians where they could obtain medical services without having to queue for them.
After the allegations went viral Kacprzyk resigned from his role in the hospital and as a Warsaw district councilor for Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO).He also returned over 100,000 Euro to the hospital after correcting 33 invoices issued by him between late January 2025 and June 2026.
A special room which was used as a waiting room in the hospital by the politicians who visited the hospital was quickly assigned another purpose by the hospital’s authorities.
The hospital in question is located in Warsaw’s affluent suburb of Ursynów and was built and is managed by the Warsaw City local authority.
The National Health Fund, Labour inspectors, the National Audit Office as well as the City authority all announced investigations into the hospital and PM Tusk announced that doctors pay would in future be capped, since it emerged that Kacprzyk was not the only example of a doctor earning extraordinary amounts in the public health service.
Prosecutors also opened an investigation into alleged fraud and abuse of power by public officials.
Information soon emerged in the Polish media of how all of the city’s hospital boards were packed with political appointees from the KO.
As the saga unfolded the hospital’s board was dismissed and the Mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski, the KO’s unsuccessful presidential candidate in the 2025 election, announced that he would be removing all politicians from the boards of Warsaw hospitals run by the city.
Trzaskowski had argued that he was not aware of what had been happening in the hospital in which Kacprzyk worked. However this was soon challenged when it emerged that a senior surgeon, dr Emil Jędrzejewski had written to Trzaskowski and tried to contact him in the middle of last year to warn of irregularities at the hospital.
The Warsaw Maor said that the surgeon had failed to take a formal route to file his allegations therefore they were not accounted for.
But the next chapter of the scandal was even more dramatic. The surgeon appeared on the popular youtube channel Kanał Zero on June 23 and claimed that Kacprzyk’s lack of experience on the job in A&E led directly to several deaths at the hospital.
“People are dying there because someone is learning, and that’s the crux of the whole situation,” Jędrzejewski told Kanał Zero.
“Medical malpractice led to complications that proved fatal,” he added, explaining that two of the cases involved faulty intubation of patients.
Following Jędrzejewski’s interview, Trzaskowski said he would notify prosecutors of the allegations.
In a statement issued by his lawyer Jacek Dubois, a senior lawyer who is a close ally of Tusk’s party, Kacprzyk “categorically” rejected the claims outlined by Jędrzejewski, accusing his former colleague of spreading “false information” about him and added he would take legal action for defamation, a criminal offence in Poland.
Public prosecutors moved fast and ordered the surgeon (Jędrzejewski) to attend an interrogation the following morning (June 24).
Jędrzejewski attended but asked for time to have his attorney present. That request was denied and the prosecutors asked him dozens of questions to which he did not respond. The surgeon will be interrogated again on June 29.
The prosecution service’s spokesman came out of the interrogation to brief the media that the prosecutors were disappointed Jędzrejewski did not provide any evidence for his claims and confirmed they had refused his request of the presence of an attorney, citing the urgency of the matters being investigated as the reason.
The prosecutor also said that “interrogation with a prosecutor are not cosy affairs like long interviews at TV stations”, hinting that the surgeon had in his view felt uncomfortable about testifying and used the lack of the presence of a lawyer as an excuse.
These remarks were soon taken up by KO politicians and the PM himself to assert that Jędzrejewski did not seem to be a reliable witness.
Tusk said on X that questions had emerged about the credibility of Jędrzejewski and his allegations after the failed hearing, but stressed that the seriousness of the claims required a thorough investigation.
“Every aspect of this case will be clarified” stated Tusk, adding that “anyone responsible for wrongdoing, negligence or false accusations would face consequences.”
The treatment handed out to the whistleblower by Tusk and the prosecutors has led to protests from journalists at Kanał Zero whose senior commentator Robert Mazurek said the ruling party were behaving “like a mafia” attempting to discourage and silence witnesses.
“I no longer believe the prosecutors actually want to investigate this and find any evidence”, said the founder and CEO of Kanal Zero Krzysztof Stanowski and the channel’s investigative journalist Patryk Słowik told viewers that prosecutors who are supposed to be examining allegations made by other doctors about the falsification of death certificates have for over a month not taken the trouble of visiting that Warsaw hospital.
Their doubts will not have been eroded by the fact that the prosecutors have yet to interview Kacprzyk whose whereabouts are known only to his attorney. The prosecution service have said that they will call upon Kacprzyk to give evidence after they have interviewed scores of other witnesses.
But Kacprzyk is to face disciplinary action for suspension of his license from the Medical Council, the regulatory body for medical professionals in Poland and informed that should criminal proceedings against the young doctor prove successful he would be stripped of his doctor’s title.
The opposition Conservatives (PiS) are demanding a special parliamentary commission investigation into the scandal and have argued that it is unacceptable for the PM to be openly undermining a key witness in the case.
They have also accused the ruling party of acting like an “octopus” in protecting its own, trying to shirk responsibility for what happened in Warsaw’s hospital as a result of a young doctor being given too much influence because he was protected by senior party figures whereas the whistleblower is being attacked for having dared to speak.
Mayor Trzaskowski is now facing calls for him to resign because of inadequate supervision of his city’s authority of a public hospital and there are now calls for a recall referendum petition to be filed.
These petitions involve tens of thousands of voters having to sign it in a limited period of time and if that happens a vote is held with a quorum that must be attained for the referendum to be valid.
But recently KO Mayors of Kraków and Zabrze were dismissed in such referendums triggered by voter protests at decisions to increase public transport prices and allegations of nepotism and cronyism in those cities administrations.
Tusk cannot dismiss Trzaskowski, however he could dismiss the interior minister Marcin Kierwiński, the General Secretary of the KO and, more importantly the man seen as being in charge of the party’s cadres in Warsaw and its surrounding areas.
However, it would be difficult to prove Kierwiński was personally involved in the nominations that took place in Warsaw hospitals, as the buck on these matters stops with the mayor.
The issue which has emerged is particularly troubling to the KO because of the stories of cuts in the health service and the long queues facing patients for treatment. Queue jumping irritates the majority who are not able to do it, even if the meme included in the post from platform X mocked it.
Kochani, czuć wybory w powietrzu, właśnie co wleciał nowy spot wyborczy Koalicji Obywatelskiej. pic.twitter.com/q7tKZvaXok
— Vastus 🇵🇱 (@Vastus31) June 23, 2026
And KO politicians have repeatedly had the misfortune of being caught repeatedly doing it. One of their MPs demanded diagnostic tests without having to wait like everyone else, another went directly to a hospital ward rather than wait at Accident and Emergency while yet another had a hospital manager hijack an ambulance with diagnostic equipment to treat her mother.
No party in Poland has ever shunned putting its members forward for jobs in the public sector, seen as rewards of power. Nevertheless, the example of a young doctor earning huge amounts of money and in a job for which he was not qualified purely because of his party allegiance is a particularly dramatic example of the phenomenon.
Should the evidence that patients in that hospital did suffer or die as a result of the way it was managed by the KO the party is likely to suffer at the ballot box next year.
