The Supreme Audit Office submitted a notification to the prosecutor's office of suspected crime by the former Minister of Culture in connection with the financing of the creation of the Museum “Memory and identity”. Among the potential allegations are exceeding the rights, acting to the detriment of the public interest and to cause property damage to the State Treasury at the height of PLN 57 million.
NIK stated that the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage spent almost PLN 206 million on the creation of the “Memory and Identity” Museum with the Lux Veritatis Foundation. Saint. John Paul II. She estimated that the institution almost financed and co -conducted by the state could become private property in a relatively short time.
In June 2018, the Minister of Culture concluded a contract with the “Lux Veritatis” Foundation regarding the construction and co -host of the museum, despite the fact that the Foundation had no experience in museum activities. Until the end of the inspection The ministry spent almost PLN 149 million on the construction of the museum, i.e. twice as much as originally assumed, as well as over PLN 57 million to develop assumptions and comprehensive implementation of the permanent exhibition, although the contract did not provide for such expenses.
The contract included a provision that in the event of the liquidation of the Museum, the Foundation will not be obliged to reimburse the expenditure incurred by the ministry. The contract also showed that the museum would operate until the end of 2023, and its further action was to depend on the consent of both parties, which is contrary to the Act on organizing and conducting cultural activities.
The NIK's findings show that the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage before and after signing the contract did not have a construction project of the investment. The built building covered the vast majority of rooms, which were not shown in connection with the museum activities. Built, among others Two spectacle rooms, including one of the largest in Poland, for over 800 places.
In the NIK opinion, the contract showed that the museum is only part of the project implemented in Toruń by the “Lux Veritatis” Foundation.
The Supreme Audit Office noted that the Ministry of Culture did not check how the Foundation uses a targeted subsidy for the implementation of the investment and limited supervision over it to the analysis of the submitted reports. The findings of the inspection show that the museum's headquarters could be built in a larger size than assumed in the contract, including other plots than it resulted from the attached documents.
According to the Supreme Audit Office, the ministry also did not verify the historical, substantive and material value of the collections from which the Foundation intended to create a permanent exhibition. It was assessed that they were not sufficient to undertake the exhibition activities provided for in the contract and statute in the assumed scope.
The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage did not order analyzes that would justify the takeover of collections for the needs of the museum or the valuation of their value. The valuation presented to the ministry by the Foundation was over PLN 88 million and, as the NIK inspectors have established, was carried out in an extremely simplified way.
“During the construction, however, it turned out that, in response to the Lux Veritatis proposal, the MKIDN almost entirely financed the seat of the museum, in which there is nothing to present to visitors, because the foundation not only did not accumulate the right set of exhibits, but had no idea what museums to collect, how to do it and how to show them” – emphasized in the NIK announcement.
NIK controllers determined that in 2020-2023 the ministry planned to spend a total of almost PLN 99 million on the development and implementation of the exhibition, and eventually spent nearly PLN 57.3 million. The contract showed that organizing an exhibition was a foundation's task.
On October 19, 2023, a few days after the parliamentary elections, the then minister of culture signed an annex that changed the original provision of the contract, adapting them to completed tasks. A provision was introduced to the contract, which obliged another minister to transfer the Lux Veritatis Foundation not less than PLN 15 million a year for four consecutive years. It was to be a subsidy for current activities.
On the day the Minister of Culture signed an annex to the contract with the Museum Foundation “Memory and Identity”, it was solemnly open, but without a permanent exhibition and only a few employees employed in a full -time employees. Currently, the facility operates in a limited form, because, according to the Museums Act, the day of organizing such an institution is adopted.
The Supreme Audit Office applied to the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage to take effective actions in order to annul the provision of the contract on the lack of the Foundation's obligation to return the expenditure incurred by the Ministry for the construction of the museum and to take actions aimed at reimbursement of expenditure incurred by the minister in 2020-2023 for the development of assumptions and comprehensive implementation of the permanent exhibition in the years 2020-2023.
In addition, the Supreme Audit Office asked the Ministry of Culture to control the use by the Museum of a special -purpose subsidy to finance the construction of the museum headquarters and undertaking actions aimed at determining the costs of building unnecessary rooms for conducting museum activities and applying for reimbursement of these expenditure from the Foundation.
From November 16, 2015 to November 27, 2023, at the head of the ministry, operating under the name Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport, stood Piotr Gliński. (PAP)
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