Krakow. The director of the Żeromski hospital bought cigars for President Majchrowski, paid with public money. There is a penalty

Lech Kucharski is the director of the Żeromski Hospital in Kraków – and that will not change for now. As the Kraków City Hall informed us, the head of the municipal hospital remains in his position despite the series of irregularities we have described.

The inspection at the city-owned Stefan Żeromski Specialist Hospital in Kraków was initiated following reports from the website tvn24.pl that the director of the facility, Lech Kucharski, bought cigars for the outgoing president, Jacek Majchrowski, with public money. It concluded that Kucharski had broken the law – although he had transferred the money to the hospital account (on the day when journalists asked him questions).

After the inspection, the new mayor of Krakow, Aleksander Miszalski from KO, met with Lech Kucharski, as he said in an interview with us. The director himself had been on a long-term leave and sick leaveso his deputies explained themselves to the inspectors.

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– Last week I spoke with director Kucharski, I accepted some of his explanations (…). The matter is not closed yet. I have not made any personnel decisions and I do not yet prejudge what they will be – Miszalski answered our questions on August 13.

The local government finally decided on the consequences for the director of the municipal unit. “By decision of President Aleksander Miszalski, director Kucharski was punished for improper use of funds from the representative fund with a reprimand and an entry in the files. He was also ordered to pay an amount equal to three times the value of the purchased cigars to the Hospice, Care and Treatment Center named after Father Pio,” Dominika Jaźwiecka from the city hall press office informed us.

“Gazeta Krakowska” was the first to report on Kucharski's punishment.

Majchrowski, who ruled Kraków for almost 22 years, is known for his love of cigars. He was twice fined by city guards for smoking them in his office on All Saints Square.

The cigars that the director of the city hospital gave him at the end of his last term cost the facility 2,126 złoty. Together with the decorative box, the amount spent by the hospital came to 2,620 złoty and 80 groszy.

Lech Kucharski made the purchase on March 15 this year. He presented the gift to President Jacek Majchrowski shortly afterwards during a meeting at the hospital. Interestingly, Kucharski was appointed director the same month. However, he held the position earlier, since September 2023. Previously, he was politically associated with Jacek Majchrowski, as a city councilor of the presidential group Przyjazny Kraków.

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We described the case in May. We sent the first questions in this case to the Krakow hospital on April 30. At first, director Kucharski did not want to answer them, defending himself in the interest of the prosecutor's investigation – however, it does not concern the purchase of cigars, but the issue of disappearing fentanyl ampoules in the Hospital Emergency Department, which we described.

The facility's later responses indicate that the director transferred a donation of three thousand złoty to the hospital account on the day our questions were received. The “refund” was supposed to resolve the controversial expense. It did not – officials entered the facility with an inspection and revealed a number of irregularities.

The report following an inspection carried out at the hospital showed that the purchase of cigars by the hospital director, Lech Kucharski, was “reprehensible”, “wasteful” and “inappropriate”.

This is not the first time recently that we have described on tvn24.pl the controversy surrounding the Stefan Żeromski Specialist Hospital in Kraków, one of the largest medical centres in Małopolska. Mateusz Kudła in a report by TVN24 revealed information about irregularities that could have occurred in the facility in connection with disappearing narcotics and a doctor administering medications to his IV drip while admitting patients. An investigation into this matter is underway at the prosecutor's office.

President Miszalski in an interview for tvn24.pl at the beginning of June he assured that the inspection he ordered also concerned the inventory of medicines. It turns out that this is not the case. “The inventory of medicines was not included in the inspection procedure” – the city office press office informed us on June 18.