End of an eight-year investigation into former heads of the Military Counterintelligence Service suspected of espionage

The District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw has discontinued the investigation against two former heads of the Military Counterintelligence Service – General Janusz Nosek, General Piotr Pytel and Colonel Krzysztof Dusza – informed the lawyer of one of the officers, Antoni Kania-Sieniawski. The lawyer thus confirmed the earlier findings of the tvn24.pl portal about the end of the eight-year-long investigation.

In an entry published on the X platform, General Pytel's lawyer posted a photo of a fragment of the prosecutor's decision dated April 22 on Friday.

“No crime committed!” – he wrote. He added that the case of Pytel, Nosek and Dusza for contacts with the FSB was discontinued. “The alleged revelations by Michał Rachoń and Sławomir Cenckiewicz from the 'RESET' program are fairy tales. The issue of disclosure of classified information by these gentlemen in the program remains open,” Kania-Sieniawski noted.

The letter shows that prosecutor Colonel Janusz Ochocki from the Military Affairs Department of the District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw, after reviewing the files, decided to discontinue the investigation into the case against the former heads of the Military Counterintelligence Service, Brigadier General Janusz Nosek and Piotr Pytl, and Colonel Krzysztof Dusza, once the director of the head's office. SKW, and currently deputy head of this service. In the decision, the prosecutor referred to the provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which states that an initiated investigation is discontinued if no offense has been committed or there is no data sufficient to justify the suspicion that it has been committed. Another provision cited by the prosecutor states that the investigation is discontinued when the act does not contain the elements of a prohibited act.

Janusz Nosek headed the military counterintelligence (SKW) from 2008 to 2013. He was succeeded by Piotr Pytel, who supervised the formation for the next several months. The third suspect in this high-profile case was Colonel Krzysztof Dusza of the Military Counterintelligence Service, who has been the deputy head of the service since December last year.

The then head of the Military Counterintelligence Service, Piotr Bączek, Antoni Macierewicz's right-hand man, filed a report on his predecessors with the prosecutor's office. The notification was the result of an audit he conducted in the special service he covered.

The military section of the prosecutor's office formulated charges against all three in December 2016. Initially, they were suspected under Article 231 of the Penal Code – the so-called “official crime”, i.e. exceeding powers and failing to fulfill duties.

At this stage, military prosecutors assessed the establishment of official cooperation between the Military Counterintelligence Service and the Russian FSB in 2010 as follows. The agreement was concluded – as the interested parties themselves explained – mainly to support the evacuation of the Polish military contingent from Afghanistan.

The prosecutor's office assessed that before the cooperation agreement was initialed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, formal errors were made, which included, among others: General Janusz Nosek and his closest associates.

The call for a hearing on this matter by Donald Tusk in the spring of 2017 turned into a political manifestation. On the way from the Central Station to the prosecutor's office to the then head of the European Council accompanied by crowds.

– This is an element of political propaganda. I am proud that as Prime Minister I could cooperate with Generals Pytel and Nosek. They were and are models of responsibility, patriotism and honor – commented Donald Tusk later.

However, the military prosecutor's office, led by Lieutenant Colonel Jan Zarosa, did not give up. She supplemented the charges against General Janusz Nosek in December 2017.

Despite the espionage charge, the prosecutor's office did not request the court to arrest the “Russian spy”, a former UOP and ABW officer, and then a general of the Military Counterintelligence Service. Antoni Macierewicz, however, appealed for universities not to employ a general who, as a retiree, fulfilled his role as a lecturer.

However, soon after such a serious accusation was made, the investigation stalled. The heads of the prosecutor's office, led by Zbigniew Ziobro, decided to dismiss prosecutor Jan Zarosa. He was replaced by Colonel Janusz Ochocki.

In the following years, little happened in the case. That is why prosecutor Ochocki informed three suspects about the “closure of the investigation” for the first time in February 2021. His decision was soon overturned. He again informed the suspects about the closure of the investigation in August 2021, and this decision was changed again. The situation repeated itself in May 2022, only to inform the suspects six months later that the decision to close the investigation had been revoked again.

– He wanted to close the case three times. Each time, superiors intervened. Ziobro, as prosecutor general, could not afford such an image failure and public admission that the case was bogus, one of the military investigators told tvn24.pl.

Now, however, the suspects have received the “decision to discontinue the investigation”, signed by Colonel Ochocki, which finally closes the investigation. He justified his decision by saying that the act (signing the contract) did not constitute a prohibited act.

The materials collected in the prosecutor's office became an element of a TVP series called “Reset”, co-created by former PiS spokesman Michał Rachoń and historian Sławomir Cenckiewicz. The production premiered in June 2023 on television, which, in the opinion of many experts, politicians and commentators, has become a propaganda mouthpiece of the United Right under the PiS government. After PiS lost power after the October parliamentary elections, no further episodes of the series were broadcast.

Shortly afterwards, a commission chaired by Sławomir Cenckiewicz began operating to investigate Russian influence. Materials from the investigation of prosecutors Zarosa and Okhotsk were also used here. On this basis, the commission issued a report in which it “recommended not to entrust tasks, positions and public functions”, including: Donald Tusk, Janusz Nosek, Piotr Pytel and Krzysztof Dusza.

As we learned unofficially, the service co-led by the latter decided to check the certificates on the basis of which Sławomir Cenckiewicz had access to state secrets. This decision means his credentials have already been suspended.