Why exactly Czarnecki’s 203 trips (over 222,000 km) were on the route to Jasło, if the MP did not even live there? It is unknown. If we assume that Czarnecki did not pay tribute in this way to the most famous resident of Jasło – Ignacy Łukasiewicz, the inventor of oil refining – then we must conclude that it was about the location of Jasło on the map: almost the most eastern and southern. It is surprising that Czarnecki did not write, for example, Ustrzyki Górnych on the forms. He did not live there either, but it is an additional 145 km on each route, and there are extraordinary views on the Great Bieszczady Loop route. In this situation, the least surprising thing is that Czarnecki gave in the documents a non-existent address in Jasło.
But the non-existent address is nothing compared to the fleet of cars that Czarnecki allegedly drove on the Jasło-Warsaw and Jasło-Strasbourg/Brussels routes. The European Parliament’s services did not require excessive bureaucracy – all they had to do was provide the destination, the distance in kilometres and the vehicle’s registration number. It would be a sin not to take advantage of the naivety of the Brussels bureaucrats….
Until now, the most famous vehicle in which MEP Czarnecki traveled to Brussels was supposedly a Fiat Punto convertible, which was scrapped when Czarnecki’s mileage began to be checked. But there were other examples of cars: about a dozen passenger cars, two Chinese mopeds, a sports motorcycle and an Iveco tractor. It seems that Czarnecki made registration entries in the documents. This can be evidenced by the case of a certain Toyota Auris, which was supposed to have been driven from Jasło to Warsaw in 2010, although the car was only produced five years later. The drivers questioned by the prosecutor’s office widened their eyes when asked whether they had lent the car to Czarnecki or driven it themselves. Some cars were not suitable for long journeys (such as the 10-year-old Fiat Uno or the 15-year-old VW Passat). Despite this, Czarnecki’s statements were full of kilometers like crazy.
Garage investigation
Someone at OLAF (the EU’s anti-fraud agency) finally started doing the math and concluded that a Polish MEP would have to do nothing but drive during that term. After all, the number of kilometers for which Czarnecki demanded reimbursement is more than five times the circumference of the Earth.
Even if we assume that on each of these trips Czarnecki’s cars reached a more than decent average speed of 100 km/h (without traffic jams, accidents, etc.) and if he did not stop for refueling or going to the toilet, he still has to spend almost 100 km/h in the car per day. However, the MEP should travel on a tractor-trailer and even on mopeds with an engine capacity of less than 50 cm3. You can’t go faster than 50 km/h on such a small thing, and even then you can’t drive for hours.
Such speculations must have been made by OLAF officials and then by a prosecutor in Poland who was responsible for conducting an investigation against an MEP from the then ruling party. There was no judicial finalization, because in 2022 the files on Czarnecki’s case were sent to the Lublin prosecutor’s office, where regional prosecutor Jerzy Ziarkiewicz was located, and all of Poland heard about it in early 2024, when it turned out that the prosecutor’s garage was so full of “dormant” files that it was impossible to store a car there. The prosecutor’s driver complained about this. Among the files stored were those relating to Ryszard Czarnecki.
Shortly before the European Parliament elections, it turned out that the new government’s prosecutor’s office was unfreezing Czarnecki’s mileage case. The MEP skillfully played the victim of political persecution and assured that he had returned PLN 104,500 to the European Parliament in 2021. euro and in his opinion there is no problem. However, the refund that Czarnecki made was only half of the amount he received for the mileage.
What does Czarnecki say about this? He blamed his colleagues. However, the testimony of these assistants, cited by “GW”, shows that the collaborators did not make a mistake, because Czarnecki himself provided them with the application data and even filled out some of the forms himself.
On August 15, the Public Prosecutor’s Office filed a complaint against the former MEP (former, because this time he did not enter the European Parliament). He could face up to 15 years in prison. This is for extorting money from the European Parliament. In addition, there may be charges of forgery and providing false information in documents. There is still shame. And this will also drag on for years.
