Michał Szczerba, MP from the Civic Coalition, said that the District Court in Warsaw on Friday confirmed irregularities in the prosecutor’s office’s proceedings in the case regarding the ventilator scandal and returned it to the prosecutor’s office. The politician said that “this is the first step on the road to justice and bringing to justice those responsible for purchasing respirators from an arms dealer.”
In the summer of 2021, the prosecutor’s office discontinued the investigation regarding the abuse of powers by Łukasz Szumowski the then Minister of Health and his deputy Janusz Cieszyński regarding the purchase of respirators.
At the end of September this year, MP Szczerba obtained the status of a person who has the right to file a complaint to discontinue the proceedings in this case. The court made a decision in this case on Friday.
– As you know, thanks to the cooperation with your attorney, attorney Marita Dybowska-Dubois, I appealed against the discontinuation of the proceedings regarding the ventilator scandal to the District Court. Today, the District Court confirmed irregularities in the prosecutor’s office’s proceedings and returned the case to the prosecutor’s office, Szczerba said during a press briefing.
– In our opinion, this is a very important step in seeking justice in this case, but it also opens up space for us to hold the officers accountable. PISwho were responsible for this wasteful purchase of respirators from an arms dealer. In this appeal, which we will also prepare after providing all the necessary documents, we will raise new circumstances that we notice in the case – he added.
– It seemed to those responsible for these abuses and failure to fulfill their duties that the case was closed. Then, when Ziobro’s prosecutor’s office, the district prosecutor’s office in Warsaw, ended the proceedings on June 21, 2021, they thought they would go unpunished, the MP continued.
– Our persistence, our consistency, our appeal, (….), resulted in the case being ongoing, and now the court also drew attention to irregularities in the operation of the prosecutor’s office and procedural shortcomings, thanks to which we will be able to, (. ..), formulate an appeal – he said.
Szczerba: this is the first step on the path to justice
As the KO MP went on to say, the consequence of this appeal “can be only one thing – returning the case to the prosecutor’s office, ending the proceedings, considering our conclusions, but also formulating charges against all those responsible for negligence and failure to fulfill their duties.”
– Today, these shortcomings are noticed by the court, which is good, but of course the road to charges against Janusz Cieszyński, Łukasz Szumowski, and other officials of the Ministry of Health is long. But we are very consistent in this action, he added.
MP Szczerba also wrote about the case on social media.
“The District Court in Warsaw returns the case to the prosecutor, finding irregularities in her actions! This is the first step on the road to justice and bringing to justice those responsible for purchasing respirators from an arms dealer. The path to PiS accountability is opening! We will not give up,” he wrote on the X platform.
Main photo source: TVN24