Today, the Minister of the Interior and Administration, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General signed the Memorandum of Understanding concerning the audit of the obligation of the previous government to safeguard the interest of the State Treasury in the process of managing public funds in 2016-2023.

Coordinating efforts of these ministries is essential to ensure effective and quick recovery of all the misappropriated funds, where there is ample evidence of wrongdoing, crime, detriment to public interest or outright theft perpetrated by people and institutions connected with the ruling elite during the Law and Justice period,”

said Prime Minister Donald Tusk during a press conference on Friday. 

The memorandum signed by the Ministers also concerns peer training of the agencies, which will enable their staff to effectively prosecute crimes committed by the previous government officials. 

“We want the National Tax Administration to support police officers and the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau with training and gaining new essential skills, so that they can more effectively investigate certain patterns, flows and events that were revealed to date,”

the Prime Minister added. 

The memorandum also mentions drawing up proposals and suggesting measures to be put in place to curb such attempts in the future.

“The ministers are tasked with developing a set of proposals that will prevent any party in power from abusing power, positions, as well as connections for the benefit of vested interests,”

the Prime Minister pointed out.

Prime Minister Tusk thanked the staff of the National Tax Administration for their efforts in detecting the irregularities and the crimes of the previous government’s officials. 

Thanks to their new powers, since February 2024, the directors of the Tax Administration Chambers have been investigating 90 entities that report to 17 ministries. There are 200 auditors working on these cases every day,”

the Prime Minister added. 

The investigations concern a large sum of money - a total of 100 billion PLN of public funds. The audits are still ongoing. 

“The National Tax Administration - not politicians, not pundits - discovered some suspicious public spending. This matter needs to be investigated, since there are reasons to believe that these funds have been spent illegally, in breach of the rules of procedure and laws, as well as to the detriment of the public interest,”

the Prime Minister noted.

The audits carried out by the National Tax Administration resulted in more than 60 criminal offence notices submitted to the Prosecutor’s Office. The total amount of potentially misappropriated funds equals 3.2 billion PLN. The cases are being handled by the National Public Prosecutor's Office, the Public Financial Discipline Ombudsman and the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau.

“The documented amount listed in these reports is well-substantiated and will be recovered with the help of the Prosecutor's Office and the Tax Administration. We are talking about 3.2 billion PLN to date. These funds are very well-documented, and we will do everything to see them paid back,”

Donald Tusk assured. 

This is just the beginning,  as more evidence of potential crimes is coming to light. The sheer scale of the abuses requires the agencies to properly catalogue and analyse all the evidence. 

“As far as other irregularities are concerned, we know for sure about more than 5 billion PLN  and these will also be reported to the relevant authorities,”

the Prime Minister added. 

The first attempts to recover the misappropriated funds have already been made.  

“If we are unable to recover the funds from institutions and organisations, we will go after board members, in accordance with the law,”

Prime Minister Tusk pointed out. 

149 notices of possible criminal offences have already been submitted to the Prosecutor’s Office. 

“The sheer level of abuses and the sense of impunity are beyond the pale. Jarosław Kaczyński and his team clearly believed that they would win the next elections, that nobody would ever find out about this and that no one would access the information to have a full picture of the abuses and misappropriation. Let me note that the National Tax Administration estimates the total amount at 100 billion PLN,”

Prime Minister Tusk pointed out. 

Additionally, the Prosecutor’s Office secured a total of 112 million PLN in the accounts of the accused individuals. 

The previous government is also accused of financing their candidates’ election campaigns with public funds under the guise of various events and picnics organised by the ministries and paid for with public money. As of today, there is evidence of nine ministries engaging in such activities. The authorities will cross-check the data in order to establish money flows and find irregularities. 

“What strikes me the most is the well-thought-out strategy of misappropriating public funds, mostly funds earmarked for individual ministries, as well as funds transferred from ministries to foundations run by politicians or their associates. . . . Law and Justice has shown great creativity here. Additionally . . . deputy ministers and ministers hailing from Law and Justice, who launched their election bids, tended to concentrate their funding in their constituencies,” 

the Prime Minister explained. 

Donald Tusk mentioned the case of Krzysztof Szczucki, former head of the Government Legislation Centre, who hired 6 employees and tasked them with supporting his election campaign, rather than the Centre’s operations. 

“People who pretended to work as officials at the Legislation Centre were smart enough to delete their e-mails and chats from their computers; however, they forgot that the computers at the Prime Minister's Office and ministries are backed up. We have dozens of e-mails sent by officials who were supposedly responsible for new laws. What did we find there? ‘Get some vodka for the guy who hung that banner for our candidate.’ . . . It goes without saying that this way of campaigning is illegal,”

the Prime Minister added. 

The Prime Minister has a reserve discretionary budget for emergencies, such as floods and other disasters. In recent years, public funds at the Prime Minister’s Office were spent on purposes that had nothing to do with these matters. 

“In 2023, various foundations, associations, clubs and religious organisations - the overwhelming majority of which were directly linked to the ruling party and its base - were awarded 524 grants, totalling 370 million PLN. I am not talking about the entire government here. Just the Prime Minister's Office. 370 million in 2023 alone,”

Prime Minister Donald Tusk noted. 

In many cases, there were no tenders or competitive requests for proposals. Two foundations - the Freedom and Independence Foundation, founded by Minister Dworczyk, and the Foundation to Aid Poles in the East - have been awarded 325 grants totalling 190 million PLN in 2020-2023.  

“Some of the common tactics included messing with the order of submissions and applications, for example when it came to grants for municipalities. Some municipalities submitted their applications as quickly as they could, because they knew they had the highest chances if they are quick enough. All while the municipalities that this or that minister liked did not submit their applications, because their votes were not needed, and as a result they ended up at the bottom of the list for no reason,”

Donald Tusk stated. 

In 2020, during the pandemic and the justified need to use the Prime Minister’s reserve, only 22 million PLN were spent. In the election year, that amount ballooned to 265 million PLN.

Even more public funds were diverted through advertising contracts concluded between State Treasury-owned companies and the public administration bodies and media outlets aligned with Law and Justice.  

“There were no objective criteria, no factors that justified such expenditure. It was all purely political. This is also something we are going to tackle,”

the Prime Minister declared. 

The memorandum signed today will lead to legislative changes that will ensure that the interests of the Treasury are effectively protected in the future.

The cases of misappropriation of public funds were found in all ministries. Prime Minister Donald Tusk mentioned the grant scheme, which enabled the institutions subordinate to Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Gliński to give out awards and subsidies, as well as government institutions purchasing hotels for no apparent reasons, as well as apartments bought by the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau for personal use. 

“We are going to unveil all these matters, especially when we will be able to announce that we are recovering the misappropriated funds. I know you are all waiting for this. This is one of the main tasks of my ministers and their staff - and the purpose of today’s memorandum,”

Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared.

The Prime Minister also announced that he would deliver weekly reports on the progress of audits and investigations into the previous government's abuses. This comes after a series of meetings of the Prime Minister and the respective ministers in recent days.