I have no right to expel Ryszard Czarnecki from the party, PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński said. If the current information is properly verified and confirmed, we have a court on our side and it has the right to do so, he added.
Former MEP Ryszard Czarnecki and his wife were arrested on Wednesday as part of an investigation into irregularities at the Collegium Humanum.
On Thursday, by decision of the PiS president, Ryszard Czarnecki was suspended as a member of the party.
The PiS chairman, asked on Friday by Sejm journalists whether he intended to expel Ryszard Czarnecki from the party, said: “I have no right to expel him from the party.”
When asked whether Czarnecki should leave PiS on his own, voluntarily, Kaczyński said: “if this information is properly verified, if it is confirmed, then we have a party court and he has that right.”
According to Kaczyński, recent problems surrounding law and justice are primarily problems of social communication.
We don’t worry too much about them, because if we did, we wouldn’t be in power for a total of 10.5 years, but we were in power and we wouldn’t have two presidents.
– added the leader of Law and Justice.
Charges against Ryszard Czarnecki
The prosecutor presented Czarnecki with two charges. The first concerns invoking influence in the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and demanding and then accepting from the rector of the Collegium Humanum – Paweł Cz. financial benefits totaling more than PLN 92,000. PLN and a personal benefit in the form of obtaining by his wife unreliable documents certifying the completion of postgraduate studies at this university. In return, the suspect acted as an intermediary in obtaining positive decisions, assessments and opinions for the university, including consent to establish a foreign branch. The second charge concerns the crime of money laundering. The prosecutor brought two similar charges against the politician’s wife, assuming that she acted jointly and in consultation with her husband. The suspects face a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
After the completion of the activities, the Public Prosecutor’s Office imposed preventive measures on the suspects in the form of bail in the amount of PLN 150 thousand. PLN for Czarnecki and PLN 50 thousand against his wife, as well as measures in the form of police supervision combined with a ban on contacting certain participants in the process.
tkwl/PAP
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— Czarnecki and his wife were charged with paying protection and demanding financial benefits. Collegium Humanum in the background