“Power in Poland remains in the hands of the KGB. Continuing my work poses a personal and mortal danger. I see no chance of success,” Michał Falzmann wrote in his diary in 1991. Falzmann, an official at Poland’s Supreme Audit Office who investigated the Foreign Debt Service Fund scandal, died in tragic circumstances. Today marks the 35th anniversary of his death.
Today is the 35th anniversary of the sudden death of Michał Falzmann, an official at the Supreme Audit Office who became the first public servant of the post-communist era to uncover what has been described as the “mother of all scandals,” the affair involving the Foreign Debt Service Fund, known by its Polish acronym FOZZ.
“Michał Falzmann should always serve as a model of a public official, someone who was a voice crying in the wilderness, and as a warning for the times in which we live,”
Professor Sławomir Cenckiewicz, former head of Poland’s National Security Bureau, said several days ago.
He stressed that it was no coincidence that Falzmann is now “a forgotten man.”
Michał Falzmann died on 18 July 1991 at the age of 37. His death was reportedly caused by a heart attack. Two days earlier, he had submitted a request to the National Bank of Poland for access to information concerning FOZZ transactions and funds. Later that same day, on the orders of the president of the Supreme Audit Office, he was removed from the audit work being conducted by his team.
Today, his daughter, journalist Zuzanna Falzmann, published on social media an excerpt from notes written in her father’s 1991 diary.
“Power in Poland remains in the hands of the KGB. Continuing my work poses a personal and mortal danger. I see no chance of success,”
the notes read.
“Thirty-five years later, there are still more questions than answers. Not all the circumstances surrounding those events have been explained (…) To this day, there has been no full accounting of what happened to the money siphoned off and stolen in the FOZZ scandal. History does not end when its protagonists pass away. It ends only when we stop asking questions,”
Zuzanna Falzmann added.