Anna Adamiak, spokeswoman for the prosecutor-general, said on Wednesday that the formal investigation had been opened a day earlier after a preliminary review found grounds for further action.
She said a “comprehensive clarification of the circumstances” required evidentiary steps that could be taken only in a full criminal investigation.
The case centers on the Constitutional Tribunal, Poland’s constitutional court. On March 13, the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, elected six new judges to the 15-member body, where only nine seats had been filled.
According to Adamiak, the investigation covers two issues. The first is whether officials helped President Karol Nawrocki fail to carry out his duty to receive the oath from four of the newly elected judges by persuading him that refusing to do so was lawful.
The second is whether officials carrying out duties at the Constitutional Tribunal failed in their own responsibilities and persistently violated the judges’ employment rights by not providing proper working conditions and pay, not assigning them cases, and not completing the formal steps needed for them to begin work.
Adamiak said the material gathered so far points to a justified suspicion that a crime may have been committed, which under Polish law is enough to open proceedings.
The investigation follows an April 13 order by Prosecutor-General Waldemar Żurek and a criminal complaint filed by Constitutional Tribunal judges Magdalena Bentkowska and Dariusz Szostek.
Żurek said at the time that possible criminal liability should be examined in relation to President's Office staff who advised Nawrocki not to receive the oath from the four judges. He said the president, along with officials and advisers in his office, may have failed to carry out their duties.
Bentkowska and Szostek filed their complaint on April 17. They argued that the four other judges had been blocked from entering service, harming the justice system because the required documents were not signed, workstations were not assigned, and no cases were allocated to them.
Nawrocki received the oath from two of the six judges at the Presidential Palace. Officials from his office said the status of the other four was still being analyzed because they believed errors had been made in the Sejm.
On April 9, the four remaining judges took oaths in the Sejm's Column Hall using a formula stating that they were doing so “before the president.”
The two judges who had already taken the oath earlier repeated it there as well. All six later submitted written versions of the oath to the president’s office.
Six newly elected Constitutional Tribunal judges took their oaths in Poland’s parliament on April 9 in the absence of the president, intensifying a political and legal standoff over the top court. Photo: PAP/Paweł Supernak
Bentkowska and Szostek took office at the tribunal that same day. But Constitutional Tribunal hea Bogdan Święczkowski said the other four, Krystian Markiewicz, Maciej Taborowski, Marcin Dziurda and Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, had not entered office because he could not recognize the Sejm ceremony as a valid oath taken “before the president.”
Markiewicz later said the four judges had asked Święczkowski to allow them to begin carrying out their duties.
Święczkowski said he regretted what he described as a move that deepened “constitutional chaos” and paralyzed the tribunal.
He also said he was considering notifying prosecutors that Bentkowska and Szostek may have filed a false crime report, and examining possible disciplinary action against them.
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in December that Poland's Constitutional Tribunal had breached key principles of EU law by failing to respect the EU court's judgments, and said the tribunal did not meet EU standards of independence because of irregularities in the appointment of three of its members and former tribunal president Julia Przyłębska.
After the ruling, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it amounted to a "green light" to "fix the tribunal" after years of legal turmoil.
In January, Żurek called for cross-party talks on "rebuilding a tribunal that is lawful, independent and trusted."
Under Poland’s constitution, Constitutional Tribunal judges are elected by parliament for nine-year terms.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP