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Poland’s former deputy foreign minister has been arrested in connection with a visa fraud scandal that undermined the previous right-wing administration and helped Donald Tusk’s coalition win October’s election.
The detention of Piotr Wawrzyk, announced on Wednesday by the country’s central anti-corruption bureau, will deepen the rift between new prime minister Tusk and opposition politicians from the former Law and Justice (PiS) administration who claim that Tusk has launched a political witch-hunt against PiS.
Tusk has said that returning Poland to a more liberal, pro-EU position required pursuing senior PiS officials suspected of crimes that range from fraud and embezzlement to unconstitutional abuses of power during the eight years when their party governed.
After the visa scandal broke in September, the PiS government fired Wawrzyk and opened an investigation into an alleged network involving foreign ministry officials who sold Polish visas for cash via consulates across the world.
While the investigation did not yield immediate results, it helped Tusk puncture the PiS government’s claims to be defending Poland against illegal immigration, which became one of the main issues in the election. Wawrzyk denied any wrongdoing on Wednesday.
However, Tusk’s campaign to highlight abuses by PiS loyalists and fire them also faces stiff resistance from President Andrzej Duda, who was nominated by PiS and has already wielded his veto powers against the prime minister.
Duda on Wednesday escalated a dispute with Tusk’s government over a separate case involving the fate of the national prosecutor, by asking the constitutional court to rule on whether the president or the government had the power to dismiss him.
The Polish president wants the court, which is dominated by PiS judges, to defend prosecutor Dariusz Barski from what Duda has called “an illegal attempt to remove him”. But Tusk’s justice minister Adam Bodnar has rejected this claim and appointed a new acting national prosecutor, Jacek Bilewicz.
Duda has also been demanding the release of two convicted PiS lawmakers who were taken to prison last week and have since been on hunger strike. Their case is another test of Duda’s presidential powers, since he is claiming they should have been protected under a 2015 pardon that he granted them.
Duda told journalists at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday that a court had ordered that one of the MPs — former interior minister Mariusz Kaminski — should be force-fed.
Wawrzyk’s arrest comes as Tusk looks to reopen cases that the previous government swept under the carpet, as well as start fresh probes into past wrongdoings that he claims his government has been unearthing since taking office in December.
“It makes our hair stand on end when, step by step, we discover the grey and black areas of activity and the financial greed that ruled Poland until recently,” Tusk said this month.
