According to Robert Ziółkowski, former Security Manager and former PiS activist, Deputy Minister of the Interior and Administration Maciej Wąsik allegedly ordered the Internal Security Agency (ISA) to conduct surveillance on the President of the Open Dialogue Foundation Bartosz Kramek in order to gain an advantage in a civil case pending between them. “When the ISA asked me for my credit card number, it was not strange to me. But when they sent me into the room to search it, I realised that there’s something fishy in this case,” he told TOK FM.
In hotels owned by Polish Hotel Holding — the state-owned company managing the largest hotel chain in Poland, including facilities of such brands as Marriott, Hilton and Best Western — special services informally conduct surveillance of guests. In addition to people who are considered a terrorist threat, opposition activists are also being spied on, Gazeta Wyborcza reported in the second half of April.
PHH president Gheorghe Marian Cristescu was said to have warned one of the leading Law and Justice MPs Joachim Brudziński (for whom PHH was to renovate a 132-square-metre flat in the centre of Warsaw), about visits by opposition politicians to facilities owned by the holding company — this includes their meeting with opposition candidate for president of Belarus Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya at Courtyard by Marriott in Warsaw, which took place in 2020.
Bartosz Kramek also accused PHH of illegal surveillance. The eavesdropping on the President of the Open Dialogue Foundation at the Renaissance Hotel was allegedly carried out by the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs himself, Maciej Wąsik, as revealed by Robert Ziółkowski — former security manager at PHH.
PHH issued a statement denying that unlawful surveillance of guests was taking place at PHH hotels and facilities. The company also noted that “each time PHH provides assistance to the special services of the Polish state, it is done on the basis and within the limits of generally applicable law”.
Robert Ziółkowski — a whistleblower in the case, listening to the content of the statement “burst out laughing”. “This is nonsense. It was not unlawful, but simply trampling the law,” commented the guest of Radio TOK FM’s Poranek, who, he claims, “was in charge of allowing ISA agents to install operational measures”.
As the former security manager and former Law and Justice (PiS) activist stressed in an interview with Jacek Żakowski, “the room cannot be equipped without the knowledge of the CEO“, who is Gheorghe Marian Cristescu. “The CEO personally introduced agents to install special measures such as cameras. This is unacceptable. You must have the permission of the court,” said the guest of this morning’s programme.
And ISA does not have court permission, which, according to the informant, was proved by an inspection carried out by Civic Platform deputies Paweł Poncyliusz and Marcin Kierwiński. “They explicitly asked the holding to show at least one document in which ISA requested such approval if the operational measures were lawful. From February 2019 to 30 November 2021, the holding never received any such document. Thus, the PHH will not show such a document because it does not have one. So why write such a statement?” Robert Ziółkowski asked.
“The agents told me directly what they expected”
Cristescu, CEO of PHH, is said to have called Ziółkowski and told him “that Mr Kramek was staying in the hotel rooms and that this should be of interest to Mr Wąsik”. The whistleblower confirmed on TOK FM that in authorising ISA to set up operational measures, “he knew he was doing an illegal thing”, just as CEO Cristescu knew.
“The chairman of the board of directors of the company, and above all the minister Maciej Wąsik, also knew about it — it was he who first put me in touch with the ISA agents. I was at his office at the time, I told him that Kramek was staying with us. He didn’t so much persuade me to commit a crime as he told me directly that I would be contacted by the agents, which happened the next day. There were at least four such meetings, and the agents told me directly what they expected,” the former security manager said.
As the TOK FM guest confessed, he is interested in politics, so he knew that Kramek was arrested in 2021 on money laundering charges. “When ISA asked me for my credit card number, it was not strange to me. But when they sent me into the room to search it, I realised that there’s something fishy in this case,” said Robert Ziółkowski.
It was then that he realised that Maciej Wąsik was linked to Kramek with a civil suit. In 2019, the Deputy Minister of the Interior called the Open Dialogue Foundation activists “Russian agents.” “In any case, in the first instance, Kramek won in court against Wąsik. Thus, Wąsik was not interested in any search related to Kramek’s case as far as money laundering is concerned, but Wąsik brazenly used these services to find dirt that he could use in a private civil case,” explained the guest of the morning programme.
“Let them lie a bit — then the fall will be more painful”
The former security manager revealed something else — Gheorghe Marian Cristescu was to be invited to the Ministry of State Assets where, in the presence of witnesses, he was asked to sign a statement of co-operation with the Military Counterintelligence Service (MCS). “A hotelier to the bone that Cristescu is, and who has spent his entire life in the hotel business, summoned me to his office and, horrified, showed me this document. I told him that it was illegal because the MCS cannot create agents in this way. For the hotelier, his discretion is very important and the email shows that he is not discreet at all as he is passing everything to Brudziński. I clearly told him that if he signs this, it will be the end of his career,” said
Robert Ziółkowski.
Did Cristescu eventually sign the declaration of cooperation with MCS? There is no evidence of this. There is, on the other hand, evidence, confirming a conversation with Ziółkowski on this subject, and it is “crushing”. “I have a recording of our entire conversation on the subject. The public will hear all the transcripts of the conversations — the one in which Mr Cristescu talks about Kramek and the conversation with Wąsik,” the former security manager admitted, but, as he announced, he will still hold off on revealing their contents. “My strategy is to let them lie a bit — then the fall will be more painful,” Robert Ziółkowski said in an interview on TOK FM.
Source: tokfm.pl
In other media:
- Polityka: How much the PiS government knows about us and what it can do to us. It has the most sensitive, intimate data (August 14, 2023)
- Gazeta Wyborcza: Bartosz Kramek is seeking an apology and a compensation of PLN 1 million for being invigilated at hotels (May 23, 2023)
- Horeca Business Club: Bugged hotels of the Polish Hotel Holding: Request for a Council of Europe investigation (May 1, 2023)
- Radio Zet: Yet another bugging scandal? ‘Surveillance in hotels, searching for condoms’ (April 28, 2023)
- Gazeta Wyborcza: Poland’s government colluded with state-owned hotel chain to spy on political opponents (April 25, 2023)
- Gazeta Wyborcza: The Hotel Scandal. The Marriott Headquarters: “We are taking all efforts to ensure a warm welcome for everyone” (April 24, 2023)
- Gazeta Wyborcza: The hotel scandal. Threats against the whistleblower (April 22, 2023)
- Gazeta Wyborcza: Bugged hotels discussed in the Sejm. The whistleblower met with opposition MPs (April 21, 2023)
- Trybuna: The room service (April 20, 2023)
- Gazeta Wyborcza: Agnieszka Kublik: Stay alert while in a hotel bathroom! This is not a hitchcock movie, this is Kaczyński’s Poland (April 19, 2023)
- Gazeta Wyborcza: The hotel scandal. After the article published by ‘Wyborcza’, Kramek wants Wąsik and Brudziński prosecuted (April 18, 2023)
- Horeca Business Club: Bugged hotels of the Polish Hotel Holding Group (April 17, 2023)
- Onet: Bugged hotels. This is how special services reportedly spied on the opposition (April 17, 2023)
- Gazeta Wyborcza: Bugged hotel rooms – Law and Justice recidivists spring to action (April 17, 2023)
- Wirtualna Polska: Surveillance of hotel guests? The Polish Hotel Holding responds and denies involvement (April 17, 2023)
- Gazeta Wyborcza: Bugged Hotels. Gazeta Wyborcza Daily reveals how the Law and Justice’s secret services are keeping tabs on the opposition (April 17, 2023)
- Upday: Do Law and Justice party special services snoop on the opposition in hotels? (April 17, 2023)