A criminal group in a government institution
The Public Prosecutor’s Office accuses Michał K. of participating in an “organised criminal group or association that aims to commit a crime and exceed its powers and fail to fulfil its duties in order to obtain financial benefits”. This first allegation in particular is something really serious.
Failure to perform duties or exceed powers by officials, while reprehensible and deserving of due consequences, is something that can happen even in a country with the highest standards. For the head of one of the most important state institutions, responsible for the supply of strategic materials, to operate in an organised criminal group is something truly extraordinary, even considering the low standards to which PiS has accustomed us in the years 2015-23.
The expression “an institution subordinate to the Prime Minister was managed by a member of an organized criminal group” is not a journalistic exaggeration for the needs of a newspaper commentary, or an accusation made in the heat of a political controversy by a member of a rival party, but a description of what is contained in the official accusations of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. If these allegations are confirmed, it will heavily burden – not to say discredit – Prime Minister Morawiecki.even if he personally had nothing to do with the violation of the law in the RARS. Because the Prime Minister, as an official controlling a certain agency, is politically responsible for its mistakes, omissions, illegal actions and, certainly, for the fact that his boss may have acted in an organized criminal group.
Morawiecki, of course, claims that his colleague is innocent and that the actions of the prosecutor’s office are “an act of perfidious political revenge by Donald Tusk’s gang”. It is true that the CBA handled the case when the services were subordinate to Mariusz Kamiński, and the prosecutor’s office opened an investigation before the change of government, but the Prime Minister apparently does not care about such details.
The problem, however, is that Michał K. is not behaving as the public would expect from an innocent person. According to media reports, the former head of the RARS is currently outside the country, in the Turkish part of Cyprus. The public prosecutor’s office intends to seek his arrest warrant, which has yet to be approved by the courts. This does not speak well of the previous government.
Contracts in exchange for trolls’ help?
Morawiecki and his party are trying to present Michał R.’s arrest as an attack on a dedicated employee who proved his worth in a crisis situation. They warn that in the future, people in similar positions will be afraid to show initiative and respond creatively in crisis situations. However, the party conveniently ignores the most problematic aspect of the scandal, namely who would profit from the agency’s “creative” activities.
This is where the second defendant in the case comes in – Paweł Sz., the creator of the “patriotic clothing” brand Red is Bed. He was supposed to make a lot of money from crisis deals with the agency, supplying it, among other things, with masks and generators for the needs of fighting Ukraine. Onet reports that Paweł Sz. paid PLN 351 million for the units, although in China he paid less than PLN 70 million for them. The puncture is almost five times larger. It is hard to believe that it would not be possible to find someone who could quickly deliver similar equipment without charging such a large margin. In total, almost half a billion zlotys were to flow from public funds to Paweł Sz.’s accounts.
So the real problem with the RARS scandal is not that the person in charge responded in an unconventional way to the extraordinary challenges related to the pandemic, but in the fact that it is a crisis could have been used by a government agency to, without respect for public funds and procedures, make money for businessmen close to the authorities. And Paweł Sz. is certainly ideologically close to the United Right camp. The patriotic clothing was in line with the historical policy of PiS, the brand was supported by the leading politicians of this formation, headed by President Andrzej Duda.
The materials released by Onet included a recording of Paweł Sz’s conversation heard by CBA. with his close associate, who was supposed to run a troll farm that conducted an informal online campaign for politicians running in the 2023 elections on the PiS lists. Paweł Sz. appears to be coordinating activities on the Internet. In this situation, a very worrying question arises: this was not a transaction in which the services of Internet trolls were offered in exchange for government contracts.
If the trial were to confirm that this was indeed the case, it could be concluded that PiS was in fact illegally financing its political propaganda with RARS funds, especially around the election campaign. This would burden not only Morawiecki and his circle, but also the entire major opposition party.
Patriotism is a facade of hidden interests
The scandal also devastated Paweł Sz. and the brand he created. Red is Bed did not just sell clothes, but also some ideas. The brand gained popularity as a tool for promoting modern, strongly right-wing patriotism, rooted in a specific historical politics. People bought Red is Bed clothes because they were convinced that right-wing patriotism and its ostentatious manifestations are simply cool.
If Paweł Sz. will not be able to defend himself against the charges in court and – what is even more important – before the court of public opinion, the fashion for “patriotic clothes” may suddenly end, or at least seriously weaken, because for some part of the population the Paweł Sz. brand is intended for the purpose of protecting the rights of the people. he will likely become a martyr, destroyed by the Tusk government for his patriotism. Even among people with right-wing views there may be a sad reflection as to whether all the brand’s flashy patriotism was just a front for its creator to make dubious deals with the right-wing government, from which only one side benefited and it certainly wasn’t Poland.
