Renowned film producer Lew Rywin has been arrested and transported to the Prosecutor’s Office in Lodz. 

The reason of Rywin’s arrest by the Central Anticorruption Bureau has not been revealed though, according to unofficial sources, he is suspected of having forged a medical certificate in 2005. Thanks to the document Rywin skipped an obligatory checkup, which was to assert if he was capable of completing a two-year prison sentence.  

Lew Rywin, co-producer of Steven Spielberg’s Schindlers’ List and Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, was a key figure in a major corruption scandal in Poland, revealed in 2002. He was charged with seeking a 17.5 million dollar bribe from Agora, the publisher of the leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, in exchange for favourable changes to the media law.  

Rywin claimed he acted on behalf of senior political figures linked to the then ruling Democratic Left Alliance, including the former PM Leszek Miller. Yet the Warsaw district court dismissed his allegations.  

In 2003 Rywin was sentenced to two years in prison and a 100,000 zlotys fine for fraud. (mg/pg)