Last week, Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz’s ministry and the government announced an audit of contracts under the National Recovery Plan (KPO) for the HoReCa sector, after absurd subsidies—such as funding for yacht purchases—came to light. But this is a PR stunt. Operator audits have already been carried out—the most recent in June 2025—and they revealed no irregularities. A separate audit of PARP, however, was disastrous: part of the funds may have been awarded without an effective cross-checking mechanism.
On Tuesday, Minister of Funds and Regional Policy Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz decided to suspend payments for the HoReCa sector from the KPO until individual contracts are reviewed and confirmed as compliant with the program’s support rules. She assured that the money would be disbursed immediately once a contract successfully passed verification.
The minister announced her decision in response to media reports of irregularities in the awarding of HoReCa (hospitality and catering) grants under the KPO.
During Tuesday’s press conference, Niezależna.pl asked Pełczyńska-Nałęcz:
“You speak today of airtight audits, where not even a mouse could slip through. But since when have these contracts been signed and payments made? Since the spring of last year. So how many audits has the ministry—or you personally, Madam Minister—ordered in relation to HoReCa? How many audits has PARP conducted at your request?”
Her explanations were rather vague.
“Doubts arose regarding HoReCa, so I ordered two audits. One with the operators, and another within PARP. One audit had already been done, and now two extra ones have been ordered due to this situation,” she replied.
We pressed further:
“So if I understand correctly, for more than a year neither the Ministry nor PARP conducted any audits in the HoReCa sector?”
“Two additional audits have now been ordered in response to public expectations. This seems like the right time to do so,”Pełczyńska-Nałęcz responded.
No Cross-Check Procedure
Our portal decided to dig deeper. It turned out that the minister’s evasive answers were meant to obscure the fact that operator audits of fund allocation had already taken place—the latest in June 2025—and they revealed no significant irregularities.
We asked both PARP and the ministry about these audits. The ministry continues to dodge the question, but PARP provided full information.
The Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy conducted an audit of PARP from July 9, 2024, to August 9, 2024. It concerned, among other things, “the effectiveness/adequacy of the prepared and implemented document templates, procedures, and regulations aimed at detecting financial fraud and irregularities, preventing their occurrence, and recovering improperly spent funds within the framework of investments.” The audit also examined “the accuracy of accounting with regard to KPO HoReCa investments.”
As part of the post-audit recommendations, PARP was instructed to:
- implement a procedure for verifying declarations of impartiality and confidentiality made by experts (both PARP’s own and external operators’),
- adjust the verification process for these declarations to also include PARP staff engaged in KPO HoReCa projects,
- and develop and implement a procedure for cross-check audits for KPO HoReCa investments.
Let us recall that the first recruitment opened in May 2024 and was initially set to last until June 5, but was later extended. This means that for a long time it was conducted without a cross-check audit procedure—and without verification of the impartiality of the experts deciding on fund allocation!
The purpose of so-called cross-checking is to ensure that entries in company records, VAT registers, and contracts are consistent with documentation held by business partners involved in the same transactions.
Audits? Positive Results
PARP audited the disbursement of HoReCa funds by regional operators. The following entities were reviewed:
- Polish Foundation for Entrepreneurship (Dec 16–18, 2024),
- Regional Development Agency S.A. (Feb 24–27, 2025),
- Society for Socio-Economic Investment S.A. (Dec 16–17, 2024),
- Kalisz Business Incubator Foundation (Mar 3–6, 2025),
- Rzeszów Regional Development Agency S.A. (Jun 10–13, 2025).
The scope of these audits included verifying whether operators properly executed their tasks and whether they managed SME projects correctly—covering the entire process from announcing recruitment, through signing SME support contracts, to actual implementation.
The completed audits yielded positive results. In addition, beyond these inspections, PARP also conducted ongoing monitoring in 2024/2025, verifying the correctness of SME project evaluations by each operator—PARP told Niezależna.pl.