Marek Bieńkowski before the Pegasus surveillance commission

The commission's meeting began at 10 a.m. Bieńkowski's hearing is the only agenda item scheduled for Monday.

Bieńkowski talked about the course of the inspection NIK in the Justice Fund. – We are starting the inspection. (…) At one stage of the inspection, the director comes to me and says that the public Justice Fund has transferred the amount of twenty-five million zlotys to the classified operating fund. Believe me, I didn't believe her the first time, he said.

– I am particularly allergic to this type of operations, because as the Commander-in-Chief of the Border Guard and as the Chief Commander of the Police, I was responsible for the correct implementation of the operational fund. In my darkest dreams, it would never occur to me that the public Justice Fund would expose the de facto operational fund, which is classified as top secret, he said.

As he said, before preparing the post-audit report, NIK requested a meeting with the head CBA, then Ernest Bejda. – We rarely do it, but during the budget audit I called a meeting with the then head of the Central Anticorruption Bureau in a quite obvious way – “Ladies and gentlemen, what are you doing?” After all, this is clearly a violation of general rules regarding the functioning of the service, said Bieńkowski.

– Wherever we presented these audit results, there was absolutely no reflection on the part of those who made this – let's call it in quotes – “mistake”. No reflection, he emphasized.

Marek Bieńkowski was, among others, co-author of the most important NIK audits in recent years. They concerned primarily disaster in Smolensk or detection of irregularities in the management of money from the Justice Fund. Bieńkowski has been associated with the Chamber since 2002, where he started working as an advisor. Later, he became the director of the Supreme Audit Office's branch office in Lublin, and then the director of the Department of Order and Internal Security of the Supreme Audit Office. He stepped down from his position in 2020.

The Sejm investigative committee is examining the legality, correctness and purposefulness of operational activities using the Pegasus surveillance software by, among others, members of the Council of Ministers during the rule of Law and Justice, secret services, fiscal control bodies, the police and the prosecutor's office. This applies to the period from November 2015 to November 2023.

So far, testimonies before the Pegasus committee have included the former deputy prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynskiformer Deputy Minister of Justice Michał Woś, former director of the Department of Family and Juvenile Affairs at the Ministry of Justice Mikołaj Pawlak and other employees of the Ministry of Justice.