2026-01-14 14:43
publication
2026-01-14 14:43
On Wednesday, the Praga-Północ District Court discontinued the private accusation case brought by the PiS president against the lawyer, member of the National Electoral Commission, Ryszard Kalisz. This is a statement regarding Barbara Skrzypek's testimony given in the prosecutor's office and her contacts with Jarosław Kaczyński.
Barbara Skrzypek, a long-time collaborator of the PiS president, died on March 15 last year. A few days earlier, she was questioned as a witness in an investigation into the PiS-linked company Srebrna. The hearing at the District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw was conducted by prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek. PiS politicians linked Skrzypek's death to her interrogation and the stress that accompanied it, as well as to not allowing her representative to participate in the interrogation.
Commenting on these events on March 18, Ryszard Kalisz said in the online channel of “Super Express” that attorney Jacek Dubois said that Barbara Skrzypek left the interrogation calm and that he “believes Attorney Dubois.” Mec. Dubois took part in the hearing as the representative of the Austrian businessman Gerald Birgfellner, who has the status of a victim in the investigation regarding the Srebrna company.
Kalisz pointed out that Kaczyński himself announced that Barbara Skrzypek met with him. Referring to his knowledge of the “lawyer's life” and the “mental life of witnesses”, Kalisz said that when Barbara Skrzypek “said what she testified, then Jarosław Kaczyński made her realize what she had said and that she had said against him.”
“Therefore, Kaczyński said today or yesterday that this report (from the interrogation – PAP) is forged, and probably knowing the emotions – because all Poles know Kaczyński's emotional state – he told her something about it. I am not drawing any conclusions from this, I am just talking about my assumptions resulting from my experience,” Kalisz said on the “Super Express” channel.
“There is no consent to such meanness. This should be the end of Ryszard Kalisz's public activity and I hope it will be,” the PiS president wrote in response on Platform X. He also assured that after she left the prosecutor's office, he talked to Barbara Skrzypek “only briefly on the phone about her feeling bad, and not about the content of her testimony.”
Kaczyński announced then that he would file “a lawsuit for the protection of personal rights, a private indictment for slander, a notification about the possibility of committing a crime of revealing the secret of an investigation, and I will also notify the bar association about a possible disciplinary tort.”
On Thursday, a conciliation hearing in this case and a hearing to consider the defendant's request to discontinue the proceedings were held in a Warsaw court. The meeting was held in private.
Then, judge Piotr Nowak ordered a break, after which he announced the decision. The court decided to discontinue the case and charge the PiS president with the costs of the court proceedings. Due to the exclusion of publicity, the judge gave an oral justification for discontinuing the case.
– I expressed my opinion with the reservation that I speak it as a lawyer with experience since 1987. (…) My entire statement was an attorney's opinion, where I said that my experience shows that if a subordinate of the person subject to the proceedings is being interrogated, the first thing the person does after leaving the prosecutor's office is to notify his superior, and for Mrs. Skrzypek, Jarosław Kaczyński was his superior – said Kalisz after leaving the courtroom.
Jarosław Kaczyński did not appear in court.
On December 5 last year, the Warsaw-Praga District Prosecutor's Office announced that the investigation into the unintentional manslaughter of Barbara Skrzypek had been discontinued. It was established that there were no actions of third parties, the death was the result of a heart attack, and the stress associated with the interrogation had no influence on her death. (PAP)
akuz/ mark/
