New "damning" evidence emerges in case dubbed "Warsawgate"

by Martin Banks

The case being brought by 61-year-old Mr Marek Kmetko is due to start in Warsaw District Court on 8 October.

Mr Kmetko was the subject of a two-year-long investigation by the authorities in Poland for alleged tax offences and labour law infringements.

However, he was informed in May of last year that the public prosecutor´s office in Warsaw that there was insufficient evidence against him and that the investigation would be discontinued.

Mr Kmetko is now seeking legal redress in order to clear his name and compensation for damages both to his reputation and to his business that he says he has suffered as a result of the long-running investigation.

He also plans to submit a petition to the petitions committee of the European Parliament in Brussels.

The case of Kmetko v the Republic of Poland has been dubbed "Warsawgate" by some in the Polish media and Mr Kmetko says there were up to 100 Polish businessmen and women who have been subjected to similar ´political harassment´ by the authorities in their homeland.

He believes much of the motivation for such action was resentment by "communist-era apparatchiks," who, to this day, remain "hostile" towards successful and dynamic entrepreneurs like himself.

The case has been dubbed "Warsaw-gate" and Mr Kmetko said, "Someone must be punished for what has happened to me."

His story dates back to the early 1990s when he established what became the biggest haulage company in Poland, employing 7,000 people.

He says that in 1993, the Polish state wrongfully seized his business assets, including 300 trucks, and that his bank accounts were illegally blocked.

He was subsequently arrested and detained in custody, although no criminal charges were ever laid against him.

He believes the more recent investigation by the Polish authorities are a fresh attempt to discredit him and "destroy" his newly rebuilt business.

Mr Kmetko says he can prove that the "unlawful" actions of Polish authorities in the early 1990s led to the violent deaths of his commercial partners and to his own unjustified imprisonment.

It is claimed that this led to the calculated ruination of his former transport business, resulting in "massive" job cuts and "huge" losses for the national economy.

"More than two decades have passed but certain civil servants still do not hesitate to break the law in order to paralyse the Polish operations of my new business which was recently launched from scratch in Germany," he said.

Mr Kmetko says the case has wider implications as it highlights the practice of "selective justice" in Eastern and Central European states.

Ukraine is one such example where selective justice is said to have been used against the country´s former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is serving a jail sentence for alleged abuse in a case branded by the West as politically motivated.

A spokesman for the Brussels-based Foundation for Democracy and Governance said, "At a time when Europe and the EU is concerned about the politically motivated imprisonment of the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Europe is not paying sufficient attention to similar examples of selective justice in its own back yard.

"Mr Kmetko´s experience, or ´Warsawgate´ as it is being called in Poland, is one such case where selective justice and deliberate orchestrated political harassment is being targeted against him by the Polish state."

The list of respondents in the hearing due to start shortly includes Polish PM Donald Tusk, the ministries of Justice and Finance and Labour as well as the Social Insurance institution in Wroclaw.

Mr Kmetko says that as he is unable to return to his home in Poland for fear of arrest he has effectively been made stateless by the Polish campaign against him.

It is one reason why he has been described by some as Poland´s answer to Edward Snowden, the American computer specialist and a former CIA and NSA employee, who leaked details of several top-secret United States government mass surveillance programmes to the press.

Like Snowden, Mr Kmetko says that the only way he could get his story into the public domain was through social media and he has now published exhaustive details of the case on the internet. Further details are available by visiting www.kmetkostory.info

The site clearly show that the authorities in Poland repeated the allegations against Mr Kmetko in a series of letters to his business partners AFTER the Warsaw public prosecutor decided to call a halt to the investigation.

The files also include a letter, dated May 2002, from the now deceased Polish MP Andrzej Lepper. In this Mr Lepper accuses the Polish state of "concealing" evidence in the Kmetko case which he describes as the "tip of a scandalous iceberg."

Mr Kmetko says this is "yet further" evidence of a "personal vendetta" against him which continues today.

He said, "About 100 prominent businessmen in Poland have had a similar experience to mine and someone clearly stood to benefit by getting rid of us and taking over our assets.

"Who in particular? That is what I want the District Court in Warsaw to find out."

He adds, "I am fully aware there is little chance of winning this case in a Polish court but in no way will I be stopped. I will go through all the level levels to seek justice."