“Colonel Paweł Woźniak – a longtime officer of the Polish special services and former deputy head of the Intelligence Agency under General Maciej Hunia – has been lawfully convicted of the crime of pedophilia and sentenced to 3 years and 6 months in prison. Since April 2024, he has been serving his sentence in a penitentiary,” announced Piotr Woyciechowski, columnist and expert on special services, on social media.
In his detailed post, Woyciechowski noted that Woźniak was arrested in May 2020 on charges of committing sexual crimes against the underage son of his sister, with the abuse allegedly lasting as long as two years.
At the time of his arrest, he was no longer an officer of the Intelligence Agency. In December 2022, the Warsaw District Court sentenced him to 5 years in prison for pedophilic acts, but the punishment was reduced on appeal to 3 years and 6 months. In January 2025, his cassation appeal was dismissed as unfounded.
The Scandal and the Intelligence Agency
What consequences has or could this scandal have for the Intelligence Agency? – asks Woyciechowski.
The expert pointed out that since the 1990s, Woźniak had been connected with the services – from the UOP (Office for State Protection), through the Internal Security Agency, the Military Intelligence Service, and finally the Intelligence Agency. He was one of the closest associates of General Maciej Hunia, head of the SWW, and from 2008 to 2015 – the Intelligence Agency.
“It was thanks to him that Woźniak owed his meteoric career in the Polish special services. At General Hunia’s request, Paweł Woźniak was appointed deputy head of the SWW in January 2008. The same scenario played out when Hunia had already been leading the Intelligence Agency for three years. In March 2011, he became Hunia’s deputy. On his chief’s behalf, he oversaw the Agency’s most important division – the operational branch. Both Hunia and Woźniak lost their positions in November 2015, right after PiS won the parliamentary elections and Beata Szydło’s government was formed,” Woyciechowski wrote.
In 2017, holding the rank of colonel, Woźniak ended his career in intelligence. Since April 2024, he has been serving his sentence in prison. Meanwhile, his patron and longtime superior, Maciej Hunia, was appointed Poland’s ambassador to Israel in April 2025.
A Mole in the Service
Woyciechowski recalled an interview conducted by Michał Rachoń with former intelligence officer Col. Piotr Wroński, published in Gazeta Polska in May 2016.
In it, Wroński spoke of a “highly placed mole” who had been operating within the Intelligence Agency for years. He repeated this claim in other media appearances.
“In my opinion, at the very top of the Intelligence Agency there was a mole, that is, a collaborator of the Russian services. I don’t know what type of cooperation we’re dealing with. I don’t know if it’s an illegal resident or an agent, and I can’t provide names, but that’s my view. The long-term helplessness and ineffectiveness of the Intelligence Agency in key Eastern affairs point to this. (…) It could be one person or a group, but that hardly matters. If such a person rose for years through the structures of the agency, it means, quite simply, that the entire structure of the Polish Intelligence Agency – which he learned by functioning in it – was exposed to hostile intelligence. This concerns the names of residents working abroad, as well as methods and procedures,” Wroński told Rachoń.
Following an audit of the Intelligence Agency initiated in 2015 by Col. Grzegorz Małecki, a report concerning treason and disclosure of classified information to unauthorized persons was submitted to the prosecutor’s office. According to Woyciechowski, the investigation has now been ongoing for 9 years at the Warsaw Regional Prosecutor’s Office.
“A Literal Swamp”
The expert pointed out numerous cases of “special services exploiting the information and materials they had on sexual deviations and perversions in order to recruit targets.”
“Recruitment of such an agent was based on kompromat, using brutal blackmail, which ensured his strong attachment to the service for many years. Sometimes a recruited deviant benefited doubly: on one hand, he avoided responsibility for his sexual crimes, and on the other, he could continue to commit new ones under the shield of the services. That’s the world of intelligence. Ruthless and cynical. A literal swamp,” he added.
Woyciechowski posed several questions:
- Could Paweł Woźniak have been recruited by foreign intelligence services?
- Were there ever attempts, approaches?
- Could he have successfully hidden his disorders for so many years?
“After all, his career in the services, his high position in the structures, his access to the highest decision-makers and to the most closely guarded secrets of Polish intelligence – combined with his hidden sexual perversions – made him a perfect target for recruitment by any foreign intelligence service. The question is entirely legitimate. The revealed and court-confirmed paraphilia of a man in his 50s must have been initiated and entrenched at least a dozen, if not several dozen, years earlier,” the post reads.
Woyciechowski added that since 1999, Woźniak had to periodically undergo procedures to obtain security clearance.
“A Contribution to the Debate on Infiltration”
“You know this is a contribution to the debate about the infiltration and transparency of Polish services for their adversaries… And there’s also the matter of accountability for the knowledge of all this by certain people, including the current…” – commented the head of the National Security Bureau, Prof. Sławomir Cenckiewicz, on Woyciechowski’s findings.