Following the change of government in October 2023, the new administration announced that it would restore the independence of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. A key step in this direction was to be an audit of politically motivated criminal cases initiated between 2015 and 2023. However, the Open Dialogue Foundation warns that the course and results of the review to date raise serious doubts as to its effectiveness and the real intentions of the new leadership of the Prosecutor’s Office.
In mid-January, the National Public Prosecutor’s Office presented a partial audit report on proceedings conducted during the United Right government’s term of office from 2016 to 2023. It was prepared by a team of ten prosecutors led by prosecutor Katarzyna Kwiatkowska. Its task was to investigate proceedings, including those initiated or closed for political reasons. The report covers 200 out of 600 cases, and significant irregularities were found in 163 cases, as the team members reported at the time.
In their latest report entitled “Polish Public Prosecutor’s Office: Restoring Independence and Reviewing Politicised Criminal Cases in Poland”, activists from the Open Dialogue Foundation discuss progress in holding the prosecutor’s office accountable for its actions during the rule of the Law and Justice party. Marcin Mycielski, the organisation’s vice-president and executive director, points out that the audit conducted by the prosecutor’s office did not take into account many key cases.
“There is mounting evidence that the scope of the audit is being knowingly and deliberately limited, contrary to the public statements of the Minister of Justice, Adam Bodnar, and the leadership of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Such an approach, however, would contradict the whole idea and cast doubt on the new government’s commitment to holding its predecessors accountable for abuses and restore justice to their victims,” Mycielski emphasises.
Review of investigations from the PiS era. Slow progress?
The audit was supposed to encompass cases involving opposition politicians, social activists, participants in anti-government protests, entrepreneurs, journalists, human rights defenders, and members of the judiciary and legal professions who defended the rule of law.
Importantly, the review was to cover cases at all stages of proceedings. As intended, prosecutors were to undertake additional actions at the investigation stage – implicitly, in cases where a political nature of the investigation was identified, aiming to discontinue unjustified proceedings. However, at the trial stage, they were to reassess the position of the public prosecutor and, where justified, to withdraw indictments from the courts by utilising the provisions of the so-called Lex Obajtek.
“The Prosecutor General has promised not only a review of the cases, but above all, tangible measures resulting in their closure or withdrawal from court, where justified, and ultimately the rehabilitation of the victims of political repression,” says Marcin Mycielski.
The Open Dialogue Foundation: report draws worrying conclusions
The vice-president of ODF also points out that the process of investigating the cases from Zbigniew Ziobro’s time is progressing extremely slowly, and it took the National Public Prosecutor half a year just to set up the team. The activists add that the partial audit report published on 14 January 2025 shows, among other things, that the investigation audit, which was announced with great fanfare by the new authorities, does not meet the basic assumptions of the audit.
“The key discrepancy is the limitation of the scope of the audit to cases closed by 31 December 2023 only. This completely excludes proceedings that are still ongoing or that were already closed in 2024, such as the case of the former Chair of PKP SA (Polish State Railways) Jakub Karnowski, the former Chief of the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA) Paweł Wojtunik or the activist of the Open Dialogue Foundation Bartosz Kramek,” Mycielski explains.
In his opinion, this decision means that many people who were the subject of politically motivated investigations during the Law and Justice Party’s time in power still have the status of “suspect” or “accused” and have to struggle with the consequences of political repression.
The ODF activists also point out that the 600 cases to be covered by the audit are just a drop in the ocean, as there are as many as one million preliminary proceedings every year in Poland. The full report on “Polish Public Prosecutor’s Office: Restoring Independence and Reviewing Politicised Criminal Cases in Poland”, which the Foundation submitted to the European Commission as part of its contribution to its annual Report on the rule of law in the EU, can be found at this link.
Source: onet.pl
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