Unlawful surveillance at the hotels of Polish Hotel Holding (PHH) is being investigated. According to reports by Gazeta Wyborcza, the president of PHH allegedly passed information to Joachim Brudziński, a Law and Justice MP, about a meeting of politicians of the then-opposition in one of the hotels managed by the holding. The name of Maciej Wąsik appears as part of this case.
On Saturday, Gazeta Wyborcza published information about a search that took place on Thursday at the home of whistleblower Robert Ziolkowski, the former security manager at Polish Hotel Holding. He used to be a supporter of the Law and Justice party, but – as he himself claims – he left his job at PHH because he did not accept the surveillance of political opponents of the Law and Justice party who were guests in hotels managed by PHH.
Investigation “into an abuse of power by a senior government official”
According to reports in Wyborcza, the latest search at Ziolkowski’s home was related to an old investigation by the Warszawa Śródmieście District Prosecutor’s Office, which is prosecuting the former PHH security manager for “harassment of PHH’s president, Gheorghe Cirstescu”.
However, on this occasion, the police officers also issued Ziolkowski with a summons to appear as a witness in a new investigation: into the abuse of power by a senior government official. Wyborcza has verified that this official is Maciej Wąsik, Deputy Interior Minister during the Law and Justice rule.
The new investigation launched on 24 January 2024 by the Warsaw District Public Prosecutor’s Office is “related to the commissioning of unlawful surveillance in 2019–2021 by the identified Deputy Coordinator of Special Services and Secretary of State at the Ministry of the Interior and Administration”, namely, Wąsik.
What is the hotel scandal all about?
What was the surveillance about? According to Ziolkowski, with Cristescu’s knowledge and consent, Wąsik ordered him to collect information on Bartosz Kramek, co-founder of the Open Dialogue Foundation, which acts in opposition to the Law and Justice party.
“This involved bugging rooms, handing over credit card details and even searching the rooms in Kramek’s absence. The activist was treated in the same way as people suspected of terrorism and organised crime,” recounts Gazeta Wyborcza.
Furthermore, on 9 September 2020, the president of PHH “communicated to Law and Justice MP Joachim Brudziński that a meeting of Civic Platform MPs with Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya would be held the following day at the Marriott Hotel at Okęcie (Chopin Airport) in Warsaw (the hotel is managed by PHH)”. The president of PHH was said to have sent an email to Brudzinski regarding the details of the meeting at the Marriott and what kind of security would accompany the participants. In the email, he mentioned that there would be a “sanitary doctor” at the meeting, which in secret service informal jargon means that the room where the meeting was to be held was bugged or that there would be Internal Security agents among the staff.
Source: onet.pl
