The visa scandal is damaging Poland’s reputation. “It’s a fraud organized by the Polish government”

The world is writing about a serious scandal, the German media is talking about a “scandal of unimaginable proportions.” In Berlin, the visa scandal is taken extremely seriously. There are even questions about Poland’s presence in Schengen. Loss of credibility and hypocrisy – this is how the German media write about the visa scandal.

“Bild” writes about Poland’s hypocrisy. About the fact that the government usually blames all failures on Germany, and now “the ‘flood’ of migrants has been intensified by corrupt Warsaw officials. Illegal refugees with purchased Polish documents are deliberately allowed to enter Germany.”

The comments are also clearly political in nature. “It is said that there were irregularities and corruption when issuing visas in Polish consulates outside Europe. The image of the party, presenting itself as the only guarantor of secure borders, is beginning to shake,” reports Deutsche Welle. – Poland, which presented itself as a country that did not will let not a single migrant through, it must now admit that it has problems – says Jacek Lepiarz from Deutsche Welle.

The Associated Press writes similarly. According to the agency, the allegations may seriously hit the conservative ruling party before the elections. “The scandal threatens to destroy PiS’s anti-immigration position,” the BBC comments.

– This scandal simply comes on the eve of the elections, making it a serious weapon in the hands of the opposition. Everyone is writing about it, says Michel Viatteau, AFP correspondent.

Even the media in Africa reminds that they wrote about the case months ago. One of the first to raise the alarm about irregularities was the Watchdog Uganda website, which described that “at the Polish embassy in Nairobi (…) a woman was ordered to pay as much as $5,000 to obtain a work visa.”

Now the author of the text tells “Faktom” that nothing has changed. – People are selling their houses, selling everything they have to get a visa from the Polish government – emphasizes Baba Andrew Buluba, a journalist from Watchdog Uganda.

READ MORE: Visa scandal. What do we know so far?

The case is said to concern thousands of people from many countries, although some did not receive visas despite the bribe, which is why they intend to protest. – This is a fraud organized by the Polish government. They treat us like garbage, not like people, says Bruce Kwikiriza, an activist from Uganda.

The media reports on further dangerous situations. The Spanish agency found that a person who did not meet the requirements for obtaining a Schengen visa, i.e. who was possibly dangerous, arranged for it to be issued at the Polish embassy in one of the Middle Eastern countries in exchange for a bribe of EUR 5,000.

The media write about the loss of Poland’s reputation. Few people believe that it is only a few hundred people, or even hundreds of thousands. However, PiS politicians keep insisting that “there is no scandal.”