The National Prosecutor’s Office has announced the discontinuation of an investigation into alleged abuse of authority by prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek. The case concerned the high-profile operation involving the submission of motions to courts across Poland aimed at blocking changes in public media. Despite investigators themselves acknowledging that the documents were prepared at a private law firm in violation of all applicable procedures, the case was closed on the grounds that the “social harm of the act is negligible.” The decision has sparked a wave of outrage within the legal community.
The Internal Affairs Department of the National Prosecutor’s Office issued a decision bringing to an end the investigation into the actions taken by prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek in November 2023.
The proceedings concerned abuse of authority (an offense under Article 231 §1 of the Criminal Code) in connection with an attempt to block amendments to the statutes of TVP S.A., Polish Radio S.A., and PAP S.A.
According to the official statement, the investigation confirmed findings first reported in March 2024 by Wirtualna Polska.
Journalists revealed at the time that the motions submitted by prosecutor Wrzosek—intended to prevent changes in public media—were prepared outside the prosecutor’s office, and that circumstantial evidence pointed to the international law firm Clifford Chance, which, incidentally, has for many years cooperated with the Kremlin, as disclosed by Gazeta Polska.
In its statement, the National Prosecutor’s Office specifies that on November 29, 2023, a letter requesting intervention was sent to Ewa Wrzosek’s official email address by then-MP Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz. Prosecutor Wrzosek did not, however, present this letter to her superior for formal assignment.
As early as the next day, November 30, 2023, motions signed by Ewa Wrzosek were sent to 17 regional courts and 17 district courts across Poland. These documents:
- were prepared technically and substantively by individuals working at a Warsaw-based law firm and were then sent using that firm’s infrastructure;
- were not registered in any record-keeping systems of the Warsaw-Mokotów District Prosecutor’s Office;
- were marked with a “Ko” reference number relating to an entirely different case (4311-0.Ko.1992.2023) in order to create an appearance of legality;
- were sent in circumvention of the binding rules on assignment, registration, and dispatch.
The Prosecutor’s Office concluded that such conduct “violated a number of sub-statutory regulations” as well as internal directives and constituted an abuse of authority. However, as stated in the justification, a decision was made to discontinue the proceedings because “the social harm of the act is negligible” (Article 17 §1(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure).
According to the investigators, the violations were “primarily formal and organizational in nature” and “did not significantly infringe the protected interest of the proper functioning of the institution.”
It should be added that the unlawfully conducted operation by Wrzosek helped the government at the time to take control of public media.
The decision of the National Prosecutor’s Office triggered an immediate and sharp reaction within the legal community. Attorney Bartosz Lewandowski, commenting on the case on platform X (formerly Twitter), wrote sarcastically:
“Attention, Esteemed Prosecutors! As of today, it is apparently no longer a crime to sign documents prepared by private law firms and submit them—without the knowledge of one’s superiors—in the interests of specific entities and politicians.”