PLN 3 billion in fraud. The court will deal with “one of the biggest scandals of the Third Polish Republic”

With the participation of, among others, Several dozen defendants and their lawyers started the main trial on the SKOK Wołomin scandal before the Warsaw-Praga District Court on Monday. This case is described as one of the biggest scandals of the Third Polish Republic.

PLN 3 billion in losses and 29 volumes of files

The total amount of fraud in connection with SKOK Wołomin is estimated by the prosecutor's office at over PLN 3 billion. There are over 60 people on the bench of the accused in the main trial, the indictment itself consists of 29 volumes, over 5.5 thousand. pages. The hearing takes place in the largest conference room of the Prague District Court.

The case was handled by several prosecutor's offices, and the main aspects of the scandal were investigated by the District Prosecutor's Office in Gorzów Wielkopolski. In recent years, in side threads of the case – according to investigators – nearly a thousand people were accused, and over 600 – including the so-called poles – were legally convicted.

However, at the end of December 2023, after a decade of investigation, the Gorzów prosecutor's office submitted to court this extensive indictment covering – as it was then reported – over 60 defendants, including former members of the management board of SKOK Wołomin.

Nearly two years after the indictment was filed, the first hearing began on Monday, attended by prosecutor Agnieszka Leszczyńska, most of the accused and their defenders, as well as representatives of the injured parties, including the trustee of the bankrupt Fund.

After an hour of formal activities – checking the presence of the accused and defense lawyers – Judge Tomasz Ładny opened the court proceedings, and prosecutor Leszczyńska began to read the indictment.

Poles, false certificates and inflated valuations

The indictment in this case – as reported by the prosecutor's office – “ended the main thread of the investigation into the operation in Poland from May 2006 to October 2014 (…) of an organized criminal group whose goal was to obtain loans and credits for fake persons from the Cooperative Savings and Credit Union in Wołomin.”

The prosecutor's office indicated that:

“the mechanism of operation of this group was that people who agreed to submit applications for loans and credits at SKOK Wołomin in exchange for financial benefits were provided with counterfeit certificates of employment and remuneration, as well as documents confirming untruths as to the actual value of the real estate securing the loans.”

“Such properties were purchased by group members with the intention of securing a loan, and their value was fictitiously inflated by untruthful appraisal reports. The perpetrators, based on such prepared documentation, extorted loans and advances from SKOK in Wołomin, and until September 2013 these were loans in amounts above PLN 1 million, and from September 2013, as a result of the by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority – up to PLN 1 million,” it was reported.

Rolling over debts and hiding money from the Polish Financial Supervision Authority

Part of the whole procedure was the so-called rollover of loans. “Instalments of previously obtained loans and credits were repaid with funds from subsequent loans and credits obtained in the same way, so as to make it difficult to detect criminal activity and to mislead the Polish Financial Supervision Authority as to the financial condition of SKOK in Wołomin,” it was reported.

“The funds extorted in this way were transferred to bank accounts of natural and business entities operated in the country and abroad, under fictitious titles in order to hide their real beneficiary,” investigators said.

As prosecutors emphasized, “the total amount of frauds covered by the proceedings of the District Prosecutor's Office in Gorzów Wielkopolski is PLN 3,12,431,000.”

Piotr Polaszczyk: From the WSI to money laundering allegations

The main defendant in the cases regarding the SKOK financial scandal, including the trial that started on Monday, is a former officer of the Military Information Services who sat on the SKOK authorities, Piotr Polaszczyk (he agrees to give his name).

Before the same Prague district court at the end of August this year. Another trial in which Polaszczyk is accused has ended. In that case, in which the trial started in the summer of 2020, it concerns the allegation of “laundering” PLN 358 million in connection with SKOK Wołomin. The court in that case is at the stage of closing arguments.

In turn, in March this year The District Court in Warsaw upheld the conviction in the 2014 case of assault on the deputy head of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, Wojciech Kwaśniak, who supervised the control at SKOK Wołomin, and legally sentenced Polaszczyk, whom the prosecutor's office accused of inciting the beating of the deputy head of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, to 8 years in prison. According to Polaszczyk's defense, the version adopted by the courts in the case of the attack on Kwaśniak was illogical, because the forceful method could not stop the KNF inspection activities. The defense filed a cassation appeal.

Marcin Jabłoński (PAP)

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