DistantNews
Support us
🇵🇱 Poland /Crime & Justice

Poland’s PiS reports Donald Tusk to prosecutors over disclosure of Zondacrypto investigation material

From Rzeczpospolita · () Polish

Translated from Polish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Under investigation
  • Law and Justice lawmaker Michał Woś said the party reported Prime Minister Donald Tusk to prosecutors over his disclosure of testimony from the Zondacrypto investigation in parliament.
  • Woś argued that the investigation materials were confidential and that the law did not authorize the prime minister to pass them on.
  • Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek said Tusk had the right to disclose the testimony, creating a dispute over the scope of that authority.

Law and Justice has reported Donald Tusk to prosecutors, accusing the Polish prime minister of committing a crime by disclosing confidential material from an investigation into the cryptocurrency exchange Zondacrypto.

The dispute followed a Sejm debate on Friday over a third presidential veto concerning a law on the crypto-assets market. Before the vote, Tusk quoted passages from a witness’s testimony in the investigation and spoke of what he called “the shocking infiltration of political circles by people involved in this operation.”

The prime minister had the right to disclose the testimony.

· Waldemar ŻurekThe prosecutor general’s defense of Tusk’s disclosure of the testimony in parliament.

Prosecutor General and Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek said that “the prime minister had the right to disclose the testimony.” Woś rejected that interpretation. At a news conference on Monday, he said the investigation materials were secret and that revealing confidential information from an investigation constituted a criminal offense subject to public prosecution.

The materials from the investigation are secret, and revealing confidential information from an investigation is a criminal offense subject to public prosecution.

· Michał WośWoś’s argument that Tusk unlawfully disclosed investigation material.

Woś argued that Article 12 of the Law on the Public Prosecutor’s Office allows the prosecutor general to inform other authorities when a case concerns state security or an important public interest. In his reading, however, the provision does not allow those authorities, including the prime minister, to distribute the information further or present it to the Sejm.

He said that if the governing parties wanted to address the matter publicly, Prosecutor General Żurek should have appeared in parliament and explained it under Article 12. Woś also cited a second paragraph that allows investigation materials to be given to the media or the public only by the prosecutor general, national prosecutor or prosecutor. Since, he said, the prime minister is not a prosecutor, he filed the notification against Tusk and people allegedly acting with him. PiS lawmaker Kacper Płażyński added that secrecy protects investigations from potential interference and said Tusk would have difficulty explaining the legal basis for disclosing the information.

There can be no situation in which there are no limits to political fighting and the law does not apply.

· Michał WośWoś’s explanation of why PiS filed the notification with prosecutors.
About this summary

Originally published by Rzeczpospolita in Polish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

More Stories

From Our Blog