“I already knew that the decision to discontinue the investigation into Giertych was embarrassing, especially since the prosecution classified it — but frankly, I didn’t expect it to be this damning,” said investigative journalist Leszek Kraskowski in a comment to Niezalezna.pl following the release of the classified justification behind dropping charges against Roman Giertych.
Apparently He Knew Nothing
The news outlet wp.pl has revealed the previously secret reasoning behind the discontinuation of the investigation into Roman Giertych in the so-called Polnord case. According to the document, prosecutors found no evidence of criminal activity on Giertych’s part. The financial decisions concerning the removal of funds from the Polnord company were made by other co-defendants, while Giertych merely provided legal services to the companies they controlled.
The prosecution claims that Giertych could not have been involved in money laundering and was simply charging high fees for his legal work. It also concluded that he had no knowledge of the misappropriation of funds from the publicly listed company.
A Blow to the Prosecution’s Credibility
Niezalezna.pl reached out to Leszek Kraskowski, an investigative journalist from Reporterzy Online, who has been covering the Polnord affair extensively on social media. In March, he also took part in a session of the Parliamentary Team for Combating Lawlessness – Safe Poland.
“I knew this ruling was embarrassing because the prosecution kept it classified, but I didn’t realize just how damning it truly was. The prosecution accepted that the ‘front man’ in these transactions — Giertych’s bodyguard known as ‘Foka’ — was the one calling the shots. That’s simply insulting to human intelligence,” Kraskowski told Niezalezna.
In his view, “the prosecutors who allowed this case to be dropped should face disciplinary action — not only the one who signed the decision, but also prosecutor Marek Wełna from the National Prosecutor’s Office, who had already been pushing to close the case back in the autumn.”
A Pattern of Concealment
Kraskowski emphasized that “Foka” appears in multiple companies that operated on behalf of Giertych, and that his wife also testified in the Polnord case. “She told prosecutors that she had set up a company at her husband’s request and was aware that he worked for Mr. Giertych. Based on that, she believed that if it was at Giertych’s request, everything must have been legal,” he explained.
“This is an outrageous scandal. I’ve repeatedly requested access to the ruling, and I was denied it under the pretext that I’m a witness in the case. Other journalists were refused as well. Even MPs from the Safe Poland parliamentary team were denied access. And that’s not all — this pattern of concealment continues. The Supreme Audit Office’s report on the Financial Supervision Authority and the Polnord scandal, which has been ready since mid-April, is also being swept under the rug by the head of the audit office. Yet again, a document crucial to this case is being hidden, supposedly because the audit is still ongoing — when in fact, it ended long ago,” Kraskowski said.
“Unprecedented in My 35 Years in Journalism”
When asked what possible public or legal interest might have justified the classification of the ruling, Kraskowski responded bluntly: “I’ve been working in journalism for 35 years and I have never, absolutely never seen a situation where a final decision to drop a case was kept secret.”
He added: “It might be understandable if we were talking about an espionage case or matters involving military infrastructure or national security. In such cases, secrecy is expected — any document from a classified investigation remains confidential. But here, we’re dealing with standard economic crime. There’s absolutely no justification for classifying such a ruling, especially since, at least theoretically, the investigation is still ongoing against the remaining eleven suspects,” Kraskowski concluded.