The National Prosecutor’s Office announced today a new charge against Father Michał O., president of the Profeto Foundation, and two officials working in the Justice Fund department, Urszula D. and Karolina K.: participation in an organized criminal group.
As the tvn24.pl portal learned, on April 13, three suspects in the investigation concerning the Justice Fund heard new charges.
“Prosecutors from Investigative Team No. 2 of the National Prosecutor's Office announced today a decision to supplement and amend the previous charges against the suspects Michał O., Urszula D. and Karolina K. In this decision, the prosecutor presented the above suspects with a new qualified charge under Article 258 § 1 of the Penal Code, i.e. the charge of participating in an organized criminal group aimed at committing crimes against property,” the spokesman for the National Prosecutor's Office, Prosecutor Przemysław Nowak, told the tvn24.pl portal.
On April 12, the prosecutor's office requested the District Court in Warsaw to extend the pre-trial detention of the three suspects for another three months.
Sebastian Klauziński about the Justice Fund and the Profeto FoundationTVN24
As prosecutor Nowak informed us, the suspects Marcin Romanowski and Tomasz Mraz, “as well as other identified and unidentified persons”, were also supposed to have participated in the organised criminal group – informs prosecutor Nowak.
In July, tvn24.pl and OKO.press found that the first investigation into the subsidy for Profeto was discontinued by the prosecutor's office in 2022, when he was the prosecutor general. Zbigniew Ziobroprivately a friend of Father Michał O.
Participation in an organized criminal group
Since February 19, 2024, the National Prosecutor's Office has been conducting an investigation into the siphoning of money from the Justice Fund.
One of the main threads of the case is a subsidy for the church-owned Profeto Foundation, which was to build a center for victims of crime in Warsaw's Wilanów district for almost 100 million złoty, which the foundation called Archipelag. According to investigators, officials from the Ministry of Justice, in agreement with Father Michał O., the president of Profeto, caused the foundation to win the competition, although it did not meet the formal and substantive requirements.
Father Michał O. in conversation with the reporter of “Black and White”TVN24
Investigators have so far filed charges against eight people. The suspects are:
- Marcin Romanowski – former Deputy Minister of Justice supervising the Justice Fund. The prosecutor's office brought charges against him, among others, of participating in an organized group aimed at committing crimes against property, in particular by exceeding powers, failing to fulfill obligations and certifying falsehoods in documents, causing large-scale damage to the property of the State Treasury;
- Fr. Michael O. – president of the Profeto Foundation, which applied for and received a grant from the Justice Fund; the prosecutor's office accuses him of participating in rigging the competition together with officials. On June 4, 2024, the prosecutor presented Michał O. with two new charges of committing “money laundering”;
- Marcin M. – Chief specialist in the Justice Fund Department, member of the competition committee, his role was to check whether the foundation’s application met the formal criteria of the competition;
- Wojciech Z. – a specialist in the FS Department, a member of the competition committee, was to check the application from a formal point of view as the second evaluator;
- Thomas Mraz – the head of the FS Department (he later became the director of the entire department), chairman of the competition committee, assessed the Profeto Foundation's application in terms of its merits, awarded points for individual elements of the application; he was the one who started cooperation with the prosecutor's office;
- Ursula D. – she was not a member of the competition committee, but when the Profeto Foundation won the competition, she headed the Justice Fund Department, and as its head she approved the competition documents; her signature appears on the decision to award the subsidy (we have this document);
- Karolina K. – she was the deputy head of the Justice Fund Department, i.e. Urszula D.'s deputy, the charges against Karolina K. concern various foundations, including Profeto;
- Peter W. – president of the Tiso construction company, a company that initially built a support center for victims commissioned by the Profeto Foundation. At the end of 2022, W. was arrested on charges of issuing false invoices and tax fraud. He spent almost a year and a half in custody. He admitted to the charges brought against him by investigators and agreed to cooperate – as did Tomasz Mraz.
Of these eight, three people – Father Michał O., Urszula D. and Karolina K. – have been in custody since March 2024.
Wojciech Z. and Marcin M. were released after being charged. Also at large are Tomasz Mraz, Marcin Romanowski and Piotr W.
Marcin Romanowski's arrest case. Two judges were removed from the benchMichał Tracz/Fakty TVN
“This was supposed to be money given under the table”
The prosecutor's office is investigating not only the granting of the subsidy from the Profeto Justice Fund, but also the subsequent laundering of this money. It was about renting a plot of land on which a building was being built.
In July tvn24.pl and OKO.press talked to Piotr W., the president of Tiso, who is currently cooperating with the prosecutor's office. In an authorized report, he told his story of building Archipelag.
According to him, the investment of the Profeto Foundation was planned even before the PIS to power. Already in 2017 – three years before the Justice Fund competition – Father Michał O. was supposed to know that he would receive money from Zbigniew Ziobro's ministry. During the construction, Piotr W. – as he claims – with the knowledge and approval of Father O. and his father, was trading in fake invoices, and the profits from this procedure – i.e. money from the Justice Fund – were shared with Profeto and the priest's father. Father Michał O., with the help of Piotr W., was supposed to withdraw PLN 3.65 million from the Justice Fund thanks to a fictitious lease of a plot of land.
It was about a plot of land in Wilanów purchased in May 2020 for PLN 6.5 million. It is on this plot that Archipelag is being built. As it results from the land and mortgage register, the plot was divided so that 7/13 of its owner is Profeto, and 6/13 is the Order of the Sacred Heart, of which Fr. Michał O. is a member.
As we have established, the Tiso company rented part of the plot belonging to the order for, a mere 3.6 million PLN. Supposedly, so that the company could keep its equipment there. The transfers for the rent went to the account of the Sacred Heart, but Tiso entered the Profeto Foundation in the “beneficiary” field.
According to Piotr W., the plot lease was a sham from the beginning. In his opinion, it was about siphoning money from the Justice Fund.
– When the money from the fund appeared, Jan came to me and said that Father Michał had to pay the appropriate people from the fund, who were involved in this. We had to figure out how to do it, because this was supposed to be money given under the table. I said that the simplest solution, which could not be detected, would be to rent this plot of land for warehouses, containers and so on. He said: “great idea”. And so I did, I transferred the money for this plot of land to them. It was 550 thousand zlotys. I was supposed to add it to the next invoices. I treated it as payment for being on this construction site – said the head of Tiso. According to Piotr W., Tiso was supposed to sign a lease agreement for another 3 million zlotys.
Main image source: TVN24