Supreme Audit Office head accuses gov't of spying and blackmail
Marian Banas, head of the Supreme Audit Office (NIK), has accused the Law and Justice government of spying, blackmail and intimidation after a state-run television channel broadcast secretly made recordings involving him.
NIK is the independent state audit office which, according to its own website, has the mission "to safeguard public spending."
The accusations made by Banas come just 38 hours before Poland goes to the polls in a bitterly contested general election.
Earlier on Friday, the broadcaster TVP Info aired excerpts of a recording of a conversation between Banas and Marek Chmaj, a Warsaw lawyer with links to Donald Tusk, the leader of the main opposition party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO).
According to TVP Info, the recording was secretly made by NIK employees.
TVP Info reported that Banas and Chmaj had met some time ago to make a political deal designed to help PO remove the ruling conservatives from power and win the general election.
Banas told a press conference on Friday afternoon that the recordings had been manipulated but he did not comment on the content of the conversation.
"Due to the unprecedented and illegal action of the law-enforcement services aimed at the independence of the Supreme Audit Office and its president, by showing the public manipulated recordings of a private conversation that were intended to discredit me and the Supreme Audit Office, I declare the following: This is an identical situation to the one that took place before the announcement of the results of the audits regarding postal elections, the justice fund and mismanagement at the Ostroleka heat and power plant," said the head of the Supreme Audit Office.
The audit of a postal election for the presidency in 2020, which was never held, and its investigation into the justice fund and the power station created friction between Banas and the government.
According to Banas, "the scale of irregularities and financial losses in these audits amounted to hundreds of millions, which was very inconvenient for those in power."
"That's why they tried to intimidate me with the help of illegal actions of the services so that these (press - PAP) conferences could not be held.
"Manipulated information about the alleged suicide attempt by my son Jakub, sent by e-mail to several NIK branches a few hours before the conference date, was intended to force me to cancel it," he explained.
"Today we have a similar situation," he continued.
"Just before the conference on the announcement of the results of the inspection at the NCBR (the National Centre for Research and Development), which are compromising for the government and prove that public funds amounting to billions were used as private ones. This happened with the participation of politicians of the ruling party and law-enforcement services employees," Banas said.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the Supreme Audit Office will not be intimidated by any blackmail and manipulation by the monopolising power, which is doing everything to ensure that the last bastion of independence, democracy and the rule of law is subordinated to its party and authoritarian power," he added.
"I would like to clearly emphasise that eavesdropping on the president of the Supreme Audit Office, a representative of the only independent institution in Poland, a constitutional body, is a crime that should be prosecuted ex officio. It is a scandal on a European scale. Therefore, I am waiting for appropriate actions by the prosecutor's office," Banas said.
Following the publication of the "Banas tapes" by TVP Info, Piotr Mueller, the government spokesman, said that the head of the Supreme Audit Office must not take part in any political activity as excerpts of his conversation confirm his involvement in politics.
"This is shocking but these tapes confirm that NIK President Marian Banas will be manipulating NIK reports shortly before a national election," Mueller told a Polish public television programme on the last day of an election campaign before the Sunday vote.
On Friday afternoon, Stanislaw Zaryn the government commissioner for information space security, denied the involvement of the law-enforcement services in the secret recording of Banas's conversations.
"M Banas attacks the services, suggesting that they are behind the leak of the shocking political conversation of the President of the Supreme Audit Office. This is nonsense. The services have nothing to do with this matter. M Banas has already embarrassed himself by spreading false accusations about the services," Zaryn wrote on social media.
Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland's prime minister, when asked later on Friday if the security agencies under his authority were behind the tapes, replied "definitely not."
"The security agencies have absolutely nothing to do with this," he said, adding that "if as a result of some conflicts in this supreme chamber… some internal recordings did appear, we are truly not to blame for this."
Morawiecki said that he did not have "the slightest information" on the subject, and that he "certainly would have received it."
He added that what the recordings showed was that the main opposition party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), was attempting to "reach a deal with Marian Banas." (PAP)
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