The most prominent contenders are Katarzyna Kwiatkowska, Ewa Wrzosek and Dariusz Korneluk representing Lex Super Omnia. The other candidates for the office are two individuals whose careers flourished under Ziobro’s administration, i.e. a trade union activist, Jacek Skała, and Agnieszka Leszczyńska, Head of the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Gorzów.
By Friday 16 February 2024 at the latest, all public prosecutors in Poland with at least 15 years’ practical experience could apply for the position as the new state prosecutor. As a result, five candidates emerged.
Now the competencies of the individual candidates are to be formally assessed. This will not be difficult, as the only criteria of the application process are 15 years’ experience in prosecution service, and the support of 50 other prosecutors. The official list of candidates will be published on Wednesday 21 February. This will be followed by a hearing of their formal speeches on 26 February. The new state prosecutor is to be appointed the same day.
Ahead of these events, NGOs will also be hosting a debate attended by all the candidates. The debate is to take place on Wednesday 21 February at 6 pm in Warsaw, at ul. Bracka 25 (Dom Braci Jabłkowskich). Admission is free. The event, which will be streamed online, has been organised by Akcja Demokracja, Open Dialogue Foundation, Defensor Iuris, Committee for the Defence of Democracy [i.e., KOD] and Władysław Bartoszewski Square Association.
The new state prosecutor is to be selected by a jury presided over by Maria Ejchart, Deputy Minister of Justice. The jury will comprise two social advisers to Minister Bodnar, two representatives of the National Council of Prosecutors, two legal experts appointed by the Minister, and two other members chosen by the Supreme Bar Council and the National Chamber of Legal Advisers, respectively. The names of the jury members are to be disclosed next Wednesday.
The newly elected state prosecutor is to replace the current Prosecutor Dariusz Barski, Zbigniew Ziobro’s confidante, who was ousted from his post at the beginning of January 2024. The current Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Adam Bodnar, removed Barski from office on the grounds of his allegedly ineffective return from retirement in 2022. In other words, Bodnar concluded that Barski held his office illegally.
Prosecutor Barski’s duties were then taken over by the Acting State Prosecutor, Jacek Bilewicz from Lex Super Omnia. However, Bilewicz was appointed for this position for two months only. Bodnar announced that a competitive hiring process was to be launched. Now his plans are simply being rolled out.
The main challenges ahead of the newly appointed state prosecutor will be to depoliticise the state prosecutor’s service, to get rid of Ziobro’s supporters and to hold the Law and Justice party accountable for all their frauds. The role will be exercised by the new appointee until the positions of Minister of Justice and Attorney General are separated.
Adam Bodnar is now developing new laws that will introduce such a separation of offices. The new legislation aims to make the prosecutor’s office independent of the whims of politicians and to introduce the necessary reforms. However, if President Andrzej Duda resolves to veto such new laws, we will need to wait until new presidential elections in the second half of 2025 for their approval.
The new state prosecutor will be obliged to closely cooperate with Adam Bodnar and Lex Super Omnia prosecutors, who will help him to depoliticise the prosecution service.
One of the candidates is the President of Lex Super Omnia, Katarzyna Kwiatkowska
Prosecutor Katarzyna Kwiatkowska is among those running in the competition for a new state prosecutor. Kwiatkowska is the President of the Lex Super Omnia, an association which has stood up for the independence of the prosecutor’s service in recent years. Kwiatkowska became President of the association three years ago, replacing Krzysztof Parchimowicz in this role.
Kwiatkowska gained a reputation for her intense criticism of the operations of the prosecutor’s office supervised by Zbigniew Ziobro and his followers, for which she suffered repression. She was sent on a six-month posting to a town called Golub-Dobrzyń by way of punishment. Moreover, she was subjected to disciplinary action for her criticism of the former state prosecutor, Bogdan Święczkowski. The state prosecutor’s office also tried to intimidate her by suing her for PLN 250,000 in return for criticising Święczkowski and the prosecutor’s office in the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
However, Kwiatkowska ultimately managed to defend her case. In 2023, the Court of Appeals in Warsaw awarded her compensation for her punitive exile to Golub-Dobrzyń. Recently, the Attorney General’s Disciplinary Court discontinued her disciplinary proceeding, finding that she never exceeded the limits of acceptable criticism and has always acted in the public interest. At the same time, Jacek Bilewicz, the Acting State Prosecutor, withdrew a lawsuit against for PLN 250,000 filed against her at the court.
Katarzyna Kwiatkowska is an experienced prosecutor who has been practising for over 30 years. She has worked at district, regional and appeal prosecutor’s offices, handling economic, clerical and corruption cases, including high-profile political ones. For 10 years, she was an inspector at the Appellate Prosecutor Office in Warsaw.
In 2016, when Zbigniew Ziobro seized control of the public prosecutor’s service, Kwiatkowska was professionally downgraded. She was transferred to the Warsaw-Praga Regional Prosecutor’s Office. As one of the few officers downgraded in that period, she sued the prosecutor’s office for the demotion. The trial is in progress.
In 2023, Kwiatkowska participated, together with Lex Super Omnia, in the drafting of a new law on the public prosecutor’s office aiming to emancipate this body from political influence. The proposed law assumes that prosecutors, just like judges, will be required to participate in professional advancement contests. The new legislation also re-establishes professional self-government and ensures the independence of prosecutors. The draft act is one of the so-called five pillars of the rule of law designed to rebuild the judiciary after the rule of Law and Justice.
Following Adam Bodnar’s nomination as Minister of Justice, Kwiatkowska was among a group of five Lex Super Omnia prosecutors who joined the Ministry of Justice to help Minister Bodnar in his fight against Zbigniew Ziobro’s prosecution service. Among the successes of this team is the ousting of Barski from his office. Currently, Kwiatkowska is the head of the pre-trial department of the State Prosecutor’s Office.
Dariusz Korneluk and Ewa Wrzosek from Lex Super Omnia are running as candidates
Two other individuals affiliated with the association of independent prosecutors are running as candidates, namely:
– Dariusz Korneluk. Korneluk has 30 years of experience as a prosecutor. He was in charge of Warsaw’s district and regional prosecutor’s services, and, before 2015, he headed the Appellate Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw. He was in charge of supervising key investigations. In 2016, when Zbigniew Ziobro took over the rule of the prosecutor’s service, he was demoted to a district prosecutor’s position. He eventually ended up in the Warsaw-Śródmieście District Prosecutor’s Office.
Korneluk is vice-president of Lex Super Omnia. He was involved in the drafting of the revised law on public prosecution service, along with Lex Super Omnia. He has gained a reputation as a great organiser. Under Law and Justice’s rule, he was disciplined for Lex Super Omnia communication critical of Ziobro’s prosecution service. The disciplinary court already exonerated him after the last election. Korneluk is part of the Lex Super Omnia team of five prosecutors who are helping Minister Bodnar to restore the independence of the prosecution service. Just a few days ago, he was appointed as a Deputy State Prosecutor.
Dariusz Korneluk has already run once in the competition for prosecutor general and successor to Andrzej Seremet, in 2015. At that time, the prosecutor’s office was still independent. Another prosecutor was nominated for the position, but he was eventually not appointed because Law and Justice, which won the parliamentary elections, decided to subordinate the prosecution service to Minister Ziobro.
– Ewa Wrzosek. Wrzosek has been a prosecutor for 28 years. During the rule of Law and Justice, she heavily criticised Zbigniew Ziobro and his partisans in the prosecutor’s office. In retaliation, several disciplinary proceedings were brought against her, including for her attempt to investigate the so-called ‘envelope election procedure’. Prosecutor Wrzosek was also disciplinarily seconded for six months to serve in the prosecutor’s office in Śrem.
Wrzosek is among those subjected to surveillance by the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA) through the Pegasus system. Because of this surveillance, the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office in Szczecin wants to bring criminal charges against her for allegedly disclosing information from the investigation and is attempting to waive her immunity at the Supreme Court’s Chamber of Professional Responsibility.
For the time being, the Chamber has non-finally refused to waive her immunity and has disallowed the case against another prosecutor who was in contact with Wrzosek and allegedly disclosed some information to her. The Chamber concluded that there were no grounds for prosecution. In connection with the case, Wrzosek was suspended for nearly a year.
The rebellious prosecutor frequently appears in the media. Citizens value her for her uncompromising attitude. She is an advocate of harsh settlements in the prosecutor’s office for its politicisation under Law and Justice and the discontinuation of cases inconvenient for this political faction. In 2023, Minister Bodnar appointed Wrzosek as his representative to the National Council of Prosecutors.
Candidates: a union activist and prosecutor for the Savings and Credit Union [SKOK] Wołomin
The last two candidates are associated with Zbigniew Ziobro’s faction in the prosecution service. They were awarded high promotions during his time. They are:
– Jacek Skała. He has been a prosecutors’ union activist for many years. He is Chairman of the Presidium of the Trade Union of Prosecutors and Prosecution Workers of the Republic of Poland. In 2023, he co-organised a protest of budgetary workers demanding pay rises from the Law and Justice government. He also supported prosecutors fighting for a salary increase, which was illegally frozen by Law and Justice during the COVID epidemic.
Skała, under Attorney General Andrzej Seremet, became famous for the detention in 2018 of Comarch and Cracovia CEO Professor Janusz Filipiak and three football club activists. Police officers dragged Filipiak off a plane, handcuffed him and took him to the police station.
News of the detention of a well-known executive spread across Poland. He was detained on the order of the District Prosecutor’s Office in Kraków. Jacek Skała, who had been promoted to prosecutor only a few months earlier, was investigating the contract of one of Cracovia’s football players. The prosecution suspected that his employment rights had been breached, and an annex to his contract had been backdated, causing him to receive a lower salary. The day after the hearing, all the detainees were released.
This was perhaps because the case had acquired a political dimension. The show-detention was reminiscent of the times of the so-called “Fourth Republic”. The Tusk government, which had then only been in power for six months, did not like it. The then Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ćwiąkalski reacted sharply. And when the court ruled that the detention was unjust, the minister apologised to Filipiak. Supervision of this investigation had been taken away from Prosecutor Skała. It was only confirmed that someone had forged a signature under one annex, but who that person had been was not established. The case was finally dropped.
Skała received a disciplinary penalty for his actions. During the disciplinary trial, he admitted to using various information-extraction techniques against detainees. The disciplinary court reprimanded him. Skała appealed, and the case was then time-barred.
Skała then developed his career as a trade union activist. He criticised Seremet’s prosecution and top-level prosecutors, describing them as so-called ‘palace prosecutors’ who are out of touch with the practical work of a field prosecutor. On the prosecutors’ social media group he used the nickname ‘Falcone’. The nickname referred to the character Giovanni Falcone, who fought the Sicilian Mafia and was killed in a bomb attack.
When Zbigniew Ziobro took over the prosecutor’s office, Skała began to move up the career ladder. From his position in the district prosecution office, he was promoted to district prosecutor in Kraków. He was also seconded to serve in the state prosecution office.
Despite the shift in political power, Skała continues to work on secondment at the state prosecution office. He was not among the 144 prosecutors whose delegations were revoked by Adam Bodnar.
– Agnieszka Leszczyńska. She is the head of the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Gorzów Wielkopolski. She was nominated to this position when Minister Ziobro was still in power. She is known for her investigation of the Wołomin Co-operative Savings and Credit Union case. She has worked in the prosecution service since 1995. Under the Law and Justice government, she was given the rank of provincial prosecutor in Szczecin. There is speculation that her candidacy is linked to Deputy Attorney General Michal Ostrowski from a faction of Ziobro’s supporters. Ostrowski is one of the rebels against the changes to the prosecution service.
Source: onet.pl
Read also:
In other media:
- Monitor Konstytucyjny: Summary of the first-ever public hearing of the National Public Prosecutor candidates (February 29, 2024)
- NGO.pl: Public hearing of candidates for the National Public Prosecutor [summary] (February 29, 2024)
- OKO.press: Five candidates running for state prosecutor. They are members of Lex Super Omnia and Ziobro’s administration (February 19, 2024)
