Former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro (PiS) has released his parliamentarian immunity, allowing the public prosecutor's office to charge him with exceeding his ministerial power while in office in 2006.

The resignation of immunity comes after the Parliamentary Regulations Committee reopened the case this morning.

MP Jaroslaw Urbaniak (Civic Platform - PO), presented the Sejm, the lower house of parliament with the charges brought against the former justice minister.

In July this year, the Rzeczpospolita daily wrote that the Prosecutor’s Office from Plock, central Poland, wanted to take away Ziobro’s parliamentary immunity, in order to charge him for allegedly disclosing secret court records to his party chairman, Jaroslaw Kaczynski in 2006. 

The confidential files included depositions of a businessman and former Polish Deputy Labour Minister Krzysztof Baszniak, who claimed that huge bribes had been involved in a contract between the state-owned Orlen and Russian Yukos Oil in 2003 when the post-communist SLD was in power.

Urbaniak argued that the Polish Constitution stipulates that “all citizens are equal before the law” and that “no one can hide behind an MP’s immunity”.

He also criticised the incident at the previous meeting of the Regulations Committee in July, when the Committee members from the Law and Justice (PiS) left the conference room in protest against government counterparts, who wanted to proceed in spite of Ziobro’s absence.