At 12 noon, the hearing on the complaint of the National Prosecutor's Office against the refusal to arrest the Sovereign Poland MP Marcin Romanowski began at the District Court in Warsaw. Romanowski's defense attorney said that “there are two possible court decisions” – upholding the decision not to impose arrest or changing the first-instance court's ruling and issuing an arrest warrant.
On Friday, the District Court in Warsaw will consider the complaint of the National Prosecutor's Office against the refusal to arrest Marcin Romanowski, a politician of Sovereign Poland, who in 2019-2023 was the deputy head of the Ministry of Justice supervising the Justice Fund. On July 16, the District Court for Warsaw-Mokotów did not agree to the politician's provisional arrest, citing his immunity from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
The detention hearing regarding the Sovereign Poland politician, former deputy head of the Ministry of Justice, began after 12 noon in the 10th Criminal Appeals Department. The ruling in this case is to be issued by three judges: Przemysław Dziwański as the chairman of the panel, as well as Wanda Jankowska-Bebeszko and Leszek Parzyszek.
Marcin Romanowski's defense attorney, Bartosz Lewandowski, said that “there are two possible court decisions.” – One solution is that the court waives the case for reconsideration, which means we have a new hearing before the court of first instance, from which either party is again entitled to appeal – he said.
The second decision may mean changing the first-instance court's ruling and ordering the arrest of Marcin Romanowski. – Then we are entitled to another complaint to a three-person panel of the same court – said Lewandowski.
The case of Marcin Romanowski's arrest. Two judges were excluded from the benchMichał Tracz/Fakty TVN
Two conflicting resolutions
The District Court in Warsaw announced in August that the arrest case would be held on September 27. The court then announced that the chairwoman of the 10th Criminal Appeals Division, Judge Monika Jankowska, decided that the three judges who will hear this case should independently decide on the shape of their panel of judges.
This decision raises a legal problem in that there are two contradictory provisions in legal circulation regarding judge Przemysław Dziwański. Both are final and there is no further appeal against them. The point is that on August 12, the district court announced that Judge Dziwański had been excluded from the panel responsible for deciding the Romanowski case.
The prosecutor's office requested his exclusion on August 2, justifying that he was nominated by the incorrectly formed National Council of the Judiciary, and that he also signed a list of support for the National Council of the Judiciary for the former deputy head of the Ministry of Justice, Łukasz Piebiak. This request – by decision of August 7 – was not granted. However, on August 12, the decision to exclude Dziwański was made by Judge Krzysztof Chmielewski while considering the application of Judge Aleksandra Rusin-Batko, who asked to exclude her from the adjudicating panel.
The National Prosecutor's Office is sending a complaint against the court's decision not to arrest MP Marcin RomanowskiTomasz Gzell/PAP/EPA
Complaint from the prosecutor's office
Marcin Romanowski – politician of Sovereign Poland, MP of the club PISwho in the years 2019-2023 was the deputy head of the Ministry of Justice supervising the Justice Fund – the suspect is, among others, about setting up competitions for money from this fund. The charges against him include the amount of over PLN 112,126,000. zloty.
In the complaint, the prosecutor's office claims that the legal analysis shows that the scope of immunity protection for Romanowski in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe does not cover the acts he is accused of. Investigators also announced that if the District Court in Warsaw upholds the decision of the first-instance court to refuse to arrest Romanowski due to the immunity of the Council of Europe Union, it will request that the immunity of the Council of Europe be revoked.
Justice Fund scandal
The National Prosecutor's Office's investigation into the Justice Fund, which has been ongoing since February, is multi-threaded. It is ongoing, among others: regarding the exceeding of powers and failure to fulfill duties in recent years by the Minister of Justice and ministry officials, who were responsible for the management, distribution and settlement of financial resources from the Justice Fund. The fund's main task is to provide assistance to victims of crime, as well as, among others, post-penitentiary assistance.
In the opinion of the PK, financial support was granted in a discretionary and arbitrary manner to the beneficiaries of programs unrelated to the objectives of the Justice Fund, which was to the detriment of the public interest – the State Treasury and private interest, which resulted in limited availability of funds for authorized entities.
So far, over a dozen people have been charged, three of them have been arrested. At the request of the prosecutor's office, the Sejm waived the immunity of Romanowski and another politician of Sovereign Poland, Michał Wos.
Main photo source: Tomasz Gzell/PAP/EPA