PM accuses predecessor of making money on war
Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, has accused his predecessor, Mateusz Morawiecki, of profiting from informal relations with the Catholic Church, the coronavirus pandemic, high inflation and, most recently, the war in Ukraine.
"Business on church land, the pandemic, the inflation, and even the war," Tusk wrote on the X platform on Wednesday.
"Businessman of the decade," he quipped.
Morawiecki was prime minister in the socially-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government in 2017-2023.
Tusk was referring to Morawiecki's purchase of land from the Catholic Church years ago for a price that media reported had been well below market value, a number of deals the Morawiecki government concluded in relation to fighting the Covid-19 pandemic which are now under investigation and the former prime minister's purchase of inflation-linked bonds before inflation spiked to 18.4 percent in Poland.
The comment on profiting from the war was likely made with reference to a recent publication by the Onet news and entertainment website, which reported on Monday that the Supreme Audit Office (NIK) was about to notify prosecutors about the then government's anti-war campaign labelled with the hashtag #StopRussiaNow.
According to Onet, the Prime Minister's Office spent PLN 23 million (EUR 5.40 mln) on the campaign, but the money went to the "golden boys" of PiS, three people with close links to the party. Quoting unofficial comments from NIK, Onet wrote that a large part of the money could have been defrauded.
In March 2022, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, Morawiecki ordered the state-owned development bank BGK to run the campaign. The bank, without the required tender, selected the small and obscure agency Tak Bardzo Group to run it.
Morawiecki defended his decision in an X post on Wednesday.
"When, in the first days of the war, you were sleeping and packing an evacuation rucksack, we were saving Ukraine," Morawiecki responded on X. (PAP)
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