The National Public Prosecutor’s Office plans to repeat the charges against MP Marcin Romanowski on Monday and also interrogate him as a suspect. PK accuses him of committing eleven crimes, including manipulating competitions for money from the Justice Fund worth more than PLN 112 million.
Romanowski – politician of sovereign Poland, MP of the PiS club, who in the years 2019-2023 was deputy head of the Ministry of Justice overseeing the Justice Fund, was summoned to appear at the prosecutor’s office on Monday 9. This is the first of two deadlines imposed on him by prosecutors investigating irregularities in the spending of money from this fund. If Romanowski appears there, hears the charges and provides explanations, prosecutors may decide, but do not have to, to file a request for his arrest with the court.
The MP’s lawyer, Bartosz Lewandowski, told PAP on Friday that he had no information on whether or not Romanowski would appear at the prosecutor’s office. If the MP avoids appearing before prosecutors, they can order his arrest to carry out planned activities. However, prosecutors cannot arrest him again based on the same facts and evidence due to the fact that the politician was already arrested in this case on July 15.
The continuation of the proceedings against Romanowski was made possible by the waiver of his immunity by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Previously – because of this immunity – on July 16, the Warsaw-Mokotów District Court did not agree to the arrest of the MP for a period of three months, and after the Public Prosecution filed a complaint against this decision – on September 27 Warsaw District Court . However, on Wednesday the Association of the Council of Europe agreed to hold the MP criminally liable, detain and arrest him.
Repeated announcement of charges against Romanowski
In the opinion of the Public Prosecution Service, the announcement of the indictment against Romanowski and his interrogation as a suspect should be repeated. The Public Prosecutor’s Office emphasizes that these actions, which were first carried out on July 15 after the Sejm revoked his immunity on July 12, were ineffective due to the immunity of the Association of the Council of Europe that protected him at the time.
The defense, which has filed a motion to end criminal proceedings against Romanowski, points out that it is unacceptable for the Public Prosecution Service to take any procedural action against the politician. The reason for this is that on July 15, when Romanowski was arrested, charges were brought against him, despite the Association of the Council of Europe’s lack of consent to his prosecution. Moreover, the defense – referring to art. 248 pair 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure – recalls that it is unacceptable to detain a politician again.
In addition, Romanowski has submitted a request to the National Public Prosecution Service to exclude prosecutors dealing with the proceedings in which – as his lawyer Bartosz Lewandowski noted – he was unlawfully deprived of his liberty on July 15 and 16 this year. The motions also include Prosecutor Dariusz Korneluk, Prosecutor Jacek Bilewicz and Attorney General Adam Bodnar, who, according to the lawyer, should not take action in the case.
Pursuant to art. 48 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, “the exclusion of the person directing or supervising the preparatory proceedings and the public prosecutor shall be decided by the public prosecutor supervising the proceedings or by his immediate superior.” This provision also states that activities carried out by the person subject to the exclusion before they occurred are not ineffective for this reason.
After Romanowski was arrested on July 15, he was charged by the public prosecutor with eleven counts, including: participation in an organized criminal group, as well as manipulating competitions for money from the Justice Fund. According to the Public Prosecution Service, the most important evidence is the statements of co-suspects Tomasz M. and Piotr W., witness statements, documentation on procedures for granting subsidies from the fund and analyzes of secure documents and electronic data carriers.
The charges against the politician – according to prosecutor Piotr Woźniak, who heads the investigation team in this case – amount to more than PLN 112,126,000. zloty.
Romanowski subsequently pleaded not guilty to committing the acts he was accused of and provided detailed explanations, including the contents of the charges against him. According to him, which the politician maintains to this day, the actions of the Public Prosecution Service have ‘the character of clear political repression’.
Romanowski’s release from prison
The next day – July 16 – Romanowski regained his freedom through the decision of the Warsaw-Mokotów District Court, which ruled that the MP was protected by the immunity of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Public Prosecution Service did not agree with this position, according to which the legal analysis, among other things, Three experts in the field of international law indicate that the scope of Romanowski’s immunity in the Council of Europe does not include the acts of which he is accused.
The National Public Prosecution Service’s investigation into the Justice Fund, which has been running since February of this year, has several threads; concerns, among other things, the exceeding of powers and failure to fulfill tasks in recent years by the Minister of Justice and officials of the ministry responsible for the management, distribution and settlement of financial resources from the Justice Fund. The main task of the fund is to provide assistance to victims of crime, including post-penitentiary assistance.
According to the prosecutors, financial support was provided in a discretionary and arbitrary manner to beneficiaries of programs unrelated to the objectives of the Justice Fund, to the detriment of the public interest (the Ministry of Finance) and the private interest, resulting in the limited availability of resources for authorized entities.
So far, more than a dozen people have been charged, three of whom have been arrested. At the request of the Public Prosecution Service, the Sejm waived the immunity not only of Romanowski, but also of another politician of Sovereign Poland, Michał Wosi, in the Justice Fund case. Further requests for immunity to be waived in this investigation cannot be ruled out.
tkwl/PAP
READ ALSO:
— Marcin Romanowski was summoned to the prosecutor’s office as a suspect! Korneluk: Two dates have been set for the hearings
– Romanowski asks the PK to exclude some prosecutors from his case! Dariusz Korneluk is one of them
Source: wPolityce