The arrests were ordered by the District Prosecutor's Office in Białystok, northeastern Poland, as part of an investigation into decisions made between 2018 and 2019 concerning the Elektrownia Ostrołęka power plant.
Tomasz Siemoniak, the minister responsible for overseeing Poland's security services, said officers from the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA) searched 30 locations across 11 of Poland’s 16 provinces, collecting documents and other evidence.
The investigation concerns suspected mismanagement at three companies involved in the project: Elektrownia Ostrołęka and the state-controlled energy groups Enea and Energa.
Siemoniak's spokesman, Jacek Dobrzyński, said the suspected losses resulted from incompetence and failures to fulfill legal duties by members of the companies’ management and supervisory boards.
Those detained were expected to face prosecutors later in the day.
"We are now beginning to investigate this case very actively, and it will be an enormous investigation," Siemoniak told broadcaster TVN24. "Today, the machinery has been set in motion."
'Multibillion scam'
Justice Minister and Prosecutor-General Waldemar Żurek said the detentions were part of a probe into a "multibillion scam" under the previous government. He described them as another step in efforts to hold former decision makers accountable for financial abuses and exceeding their powers.
The Elektrownia Ostrołęka project, promoted under the former Law and Justice (PiS) government, involved plans to build a 1,000-megawatt coal-fired generating unit in northeastern Poland.
In 2018, a consortium led by GE Power and Alstom won a construction contract worth more than PLN 6 billion. Work began later that year but was suspended in the spring of 2020 amid mounting concerns over its economic viability.
The investors subsequently abandoned the coal-fired project in favor of a gas-powered plant.
Demolition of the partially completed coal facility began in March 2021.
The abandoned project became a political controversy over the use of public money.
In May 2022, opposition lawmakers Dariusz Joński and Michał Szczerba, now members of the European Parliament for the governing Civic Coalition (KO), estimated that the project had wasted PLN 1.3 billion, a cost they said was ultimately borne by electricity consumers.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP