"After six months, we have 62 people from the previous ruling elite who have been charged”, Donald Tusk told reporters on Friday.
“This has never happened in history before our predecessors," he added, without specifying who the officials were and what charges they faced.
Tusk's pro-European coalition government, in office since December, has made a priority of holding to account those it accuses of wrongdoing under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) nationalist administration.
Tusk said the government was conducting further proceedings, with 200 tax inspectors investigating 90 units in 17 ministries, and that the scale of potencial irregularities was estimated by the tax office at up to USD 25 billion.
"Notifications were (already) submitted to the prosecutor's office about the possibility of crimes having been committed involving more than 3.2 billion zlotys (around USD 800 mln) ", Tusk added.
He called the irregularities a "closed system" created by the former ruling party, which were based on an assumption it could not lose power.
The PM accused his predecessors of using state money “for their own political and financial benefit”.
This allegedly included financing election campaigns, funding foundations linked to the ruling party, and supporting friendly media outlets.
Law and Justice politicians have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on X on Friday that the Tusk government's main goal was to "liquidate the biggest opposition party".
"When you are obsessed, you go to a doctor, not form a government," Morawiecki added.
During its eight-year rule, the Law and Justice faced accusations from opposition parties, rights groups and the European Union of subverting democratic norms, increasing state control over the judiciary and eroding media freedoms and the rule of law.
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Source: PAP, Reuters
