The head of the National Broadcasting Council, Maciej Świrski, announced today that he will continue to hold office and is not subject to suspension. He also recalled the unlawful actions of the December 13 coalition related to the takeover of public media. However, for TVP Info under liquidation, Świrski’s press conference seemed of little importance, as it was not broadcast.
Świrski: “I am performing my duties, as I have so far”
The Chairman of the National Broadcasting Council, Maciej Świrski, held a press conference today during which he commented on the actions of the December 13 coalition aimed at bringing him before the State Tribunal.
“Respecting the law, that is, the ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal, which acts as a supervisory body over the Sejm and other branches of government, I am not submitting to a law that has been invalidated by the Constitutional Tribunal. I continue to perform my duties as before-without interruption-and I am not subject to suspension,” Świrski declared.
TVP Info w likwidacji did not broadcast the statement from the head of National Broadcasting Council.
During the conference, the head of National Broadcasting Council also spoke about the illegal takeover of public media.
“If Minister Sienkiewicz, at the moment when the ‘Wejście’ group started operating under the Ministry of Culture, had wanted to take control of public media without harming them-albeit breaking the Constitutional Tribunal’s protective ruling-then, had he wished to act lawfully, he should have placed the public media under restructuring, not liquidation. There would have been no issue. He would have had the same authority over the media as before, there wouldn’t have been any problem with the license fee, and funds would have continued to be transferred as they had been,”
said Maciej Świrski.
“The lack of professionalism on the part of Minister Sienkiewicz and the entire group advising him led to these companies being placed in liquidation, and now there’s a question as to whether the appointed liquidators have the legal right to access media funding and manage public assets. At the time all this was happening, the reports concerning the liquidators were very unclear. Mr. Gorgosz was being portrayed in the media as someone facing criminal charges related to his business activities. We were skeptical, so we had to take steps to protect public assets,”
he said.
He argued that under the Civil Code, transferring amounts due to a creditor into a court deposit constitutes fulfillment of the obligation, and therefore “we did just that by transferring the funds into court deposits.”
“The liquidators had a simple task-to go to the courts that entered them into the register, holding in one hand their appointment document, and in the other, a document from that same court, and request the funds. They would have received them, or the court would have found a reason not to hand them over-but that’s not National Broadcasting Council‘s concern. Instead, they wrote letters to the courts asking to reject the deposits, thereby delaying the entire process of accessing those funds, acting to the detriment of their own companies, while accusing National Broadcasting Council-through defamatory campaigns-of allegedly cutting off funding for public media. It was the liquidators, in collusion and agreement, who failed to collect the funds in a timely manner-even though the courts were willing to release them, as evidenced by the fact that two liquidators collected the funds on their first attempt,”
he concluded.
We verified whether TVP Info under liquidation, as a broadcaster obliged to fulfill a public service mission and deliver reliable information, aired Maciej Świrski’s statement live-even partially. It turned out they did not.