Ryszard Czarnecki defends himself and sinks even deeper. “He dug in”

Shortly after the former MEP was released after questioning at the National Prosecutor’s Office in Katowice, he gave a brief interview to RMF FM. The reporter asked him whether he had promised the former rector of the Collegium Humanum that he would obtain permission to open a branch of the university in Uzbekistan. Let us recall that on October 27, 2021, the Collegium “as the first Polish university” opened a branch in Andijan, Uzbek. From then on, students would receive diplomas respected in the European Union. Ryszard Czarnecki, then a PiS MEP, also spoke at the ceremony, as the university boasted on its website.

– I will support all Polish universities that establish branches anywhere in the world. And the situation I am accused of is, I would say, a realization of the Polish proverb that every good deed will be punished. I emphasize that even now and in the future, if any university wants to open a branch anywhere in the world, (…) I will support such situations. However, it has nothing to do with any financial benefits. I did not receive them. This is slander – said Ryszard Czarnecki.

And he did it because if he helped in any way to establish a branch in Uzbekistan, he would have to do it in violation of the law. A private university in Warsaw was unable to obtain permission to educate foreigners because it had not existed for five years. Let us recall that Collegium Humanum was established in 2018, and the branch in Uzbekistan was opened only three years later.

Why are there special requirements for the establishment of foreign branches of universities? So that Polish universities do not import foreigners en masse or legalize the stay of foreigners who stay in Poland for the purpose of not studying, but working (i.e., apparent students who are employees and not students). If someone wants to educate foreign students, they must obtain the consent of the head of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration.

Without this approval, universities cannot issue documents required for foreigners to obtain visas. They also cannot issue to voivodeship offices the documentation required as an attachment to applications for temporary residence cards of foreigners.

One of the conditions for submitting an application for approval of a university is that it must have been operating for at least five years. The other conditions are a positive opinion from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (formerly the Ministry of Education and Science), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Police, the Border Guard and the Internal Security Agency.

Ryszard Czarnecki’s wife with diplomas

The Collegium Humanum did not meet the first of these conditions. It had no right to open a branch in Andijan or to accept foreign students.

And yet he did so, and even boasted about it, also through the mouth of Ryszard Czarnecki. According to the Rad-On system (which stores numerous data, including university activities), in 2022, 130 people from Uzbekistan studied at Collegium Humanum, a year earlier 90, and in 2020 – one. In total, the university annually received more than a thousand foreign students, mainly from Hungary and the Czech Republic, but also from countries of the former Eastern Bloc.

To this day, it is not known how this was possible, because according to the law the university could not obtain permission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration to educate foreigners because it had not existed for five years. It received this permission only in November 2023, which means that for years the authorities turned a blind eye to the fact that Uzbek citizens were students at a Polish university.

Ryszard Czarnecki also courageously defends his wife, but here too the issue is quite obvious.

Already in 2022, “Newsweek” informants claimed that the PiS politician used his connections in the Polish Olympic Committee and got the former rector of the Collegium Humanum, among others, a job in a marketing office. Paweł Cz., who has already been charged with 75 counts by the public prosecutor’s office, including such serious charges as the production of fake MBA degrees on a large scale, as well as the leadership of an organized criminal group, returned the favor with as many as three degrees for his wife: Emilia H. graduated in 2021 from the Collegium Humanum with a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree, and previously received two MBAs.

Emilia H. still “works” at this university. According to data from the Rad-On system, the wife of the former PiS MP, who has a master’s degree in law, still works at the Warsaw University of Business and Applied Sciences, the former Collegium Humanum. She was accepted on January 1, 2022, and this is her main place of work. However, it is not known exactly what she is doing there. The students I spoke to had never heard of it.