The District Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw claims that the secret recording of a conversation between the former deputy premier and agriculture minister Andrzej Lepper (Self Defence) and former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro (Law and Justice - PiS), handed over to the prosecution by the latter in August, is not authentic, reports the Radio News Agency (IAR).

Zbigniew Ziobro told a press conference on Wednesday that he had not tampered with the recording.

Ziobro allegedly recorded a private conversation with Lepper in relation to the Central Anticorruption Agency’s (CBA) operation in the “money for land” corruption case in the agricultural ministry last year.

As a result of the operation, CBA arrested two middlemen who were to pass bribe money to Andrzej Lepper, but Anticorruption Agency did not succeed in catching Lepper red-handed due to a lack of hard evidence. 

Justice minister Ziobro blamed the failure on an “information leak”, while Lepper told the media that he had obtained knowledge of the planned provocation by CBA from minister Ziobro himself.

In reply, Ziobro showed a dictaphone at a press conference and said that he had recorded the crucial conversation with Lepper, in which the CBA provocation was never mentioned.

Prosecutor Katarzyna Szeska told IAR on Wednesday that the recording provided by Ziobro might not be authentic. She said the media carrier presented to the prosecution was a copy of the original recording and prosecution experts were trying to locate the original carrier in order to determine if it had been tampered with.

At the press conference on Wednesday, Zbigniew Ziobro denied any manipulation and said the recording had simply been transferred from the dictaphone onto a computer and then a CD sent to the prosecution. (mj)