The National Electoral Commission returns to the issue of PiS finances. The decision on the subsidy will be made today

CNE members want Thursday’s decision on the PiS committee’s report to be final.

Everything we could have asked for, the documents we could have received, we have received. Matters that needed to be disclosed or clarified have now been clarified. What we already know is sufficient material to pass a resolution. – said one of the members of the National Electoral Commission to PAP.

So far Five members of the National Electoral Commission voted to reject the report (nominated by KO, Left and Third Way), and against – four (judges Sylwester Marciniak and Wojciech Sych and members nominated by PiS).

Ryszard Kalisz, a member of the Commission, recently said in an interview with TVP Info that, according to the documents held by the National Electoral Commission, the amount of irregularities in the financing of the PiS campaign “significantly exceeds” PLN 380,000. PLN, that is, 1 percent. of all expenses of this commission. This means that the condition of the Electoral Code has been met – the regulations absolutely require the rejection of financial statements if the funds obtained, accepted or spent in violation of the regulations exceed 1%. all funds of the committee.

The PAP has learned that there is still no draft resolution from the National Electoral Commission with calculations of the total value of illegal expenses. The amount of resources that Law and Justice will likely lose will be discussed at Thursday’s meeting.

The maximum penalty is the loss of 75% of the annual budget subsidy of almost PLN 26 million..

I don’t know this amount yet and it should be included in the resolution of the National Electoral Commission. It can be expected that the meeting will probably last some time. – one of the Commission members told the agency.

PiS could lose at most a few percent of revenues due to the National Electoral Commission

The National Electoral Commission meeting on the PiS committee’s financial report has been postponed twice; recently to ask for explanations from the Government Center for Legislation (RCL) and the Network of Scientific and Academic Computers (NASK).

In the case of the RCL, it was a question of employing six people who were not supposed to do any work, but only to conduct the Sejm election campaign of the then head of the RCL, Krzysztof Szczucki..

In the case of NASK, in turn, it was a public task carried out in 2022-2023 that consisted of monitoring disinformation and fake news content available on social media, financed by a specific grant agreement of over PLN 18 million. The National Electoral Commission requested an assessment of the reports that could be used to support the PiS election campaign.

The National Electoral Commission also has documents from the Supreme Audit Office regarding the 2023 audit and the budget audit. The head of the Chamber, Marian Banaś, announced that after an inspection of the ministries of family and foreign affairs, the Human Rights Commissioner, the Institute of National Remembrance and the Social Security Institution, the Chamber sent five notifications to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, including suspicions of mismanagement related to the promotion of the 800 plus programme.

In addition, the National Electoral Commission received three notifications from the Ministry of Justice regarding doubts regarding the financing of the 2023 electoral campaign. The first was related to the conclusions of the investigation into the Justice Fund. Despite the Ministry of Justice’s request that the National Electoral Commission verify whether the fund’s expenditures were consistent with the provisions of the Electoral Code, The PAP has officially acknowledged that the National Electoral Commission – when making decisions on the PiS report – will not take into account the issue of the Fund.

Regardless, the Minister of Justice also asked the Commission to assess whether the ministry’s advertising campaigns in 2019-2023 complied with the rules for financing electoral commissions. He then reported that the Ministry of Justice discovered that “the spending on the Ministry’s advertising was done with a credit card, but the time of broadcasting these advertisements was very similar to the time of the electoral campaign”.

In the latest notification, the head of the Ministry of Justice, Adam Bodnar, pointed out the likelihood of violation of the rules on conducting and financing an electoral campaign by the recording in which the then Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro announced harsher penalties for the most serious crimes.

Furthermore, in recent weeks, Civic Coalition politicians have submitted new documents to the National Electoral Commission questioning the fairness of PiS’s financing of the election campaign.

Deputy Minister of National Defense Cezary Tomczyk reported on the unauthorized use of the budget of the Ministry of National Defense for electoral propaganda in connection with the organization of military picnics by the former management of the ministry during the 2023 election campaign.

PO MEP Michał Szczerba submitted documents to the National Electoral Commission that were supposed to illustrate irregularities in the spending of PLN 1.2 million on PiS electoral devices, such as mugs, T-shirts and billboards. According to him, the financing was provided through companies with which state treasury companies cooperated.

PiS politicians accuse those in power of putting pressure on the National Electoral Commission and wanting to deprive their party of financial resources. In their opinion, there is no reason to reject the PiS commission’s report, and the National Electoral Commission should examine the financial statements in accordance with the regulations. PiS representatives stress that if there are any irregularities, the investigation is the responsibility of the public prosecutor’s office and the courts, and not the National Electoral Commission. They also point out that there is no court ruling confirming the alleged abuses during the campaign..