Corruption charges, involving taking bribes of up to 300,000 dollars, will be made today against 16 former Warsaw local government officers, informs Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro. Ziobro says that the corruption – which terms the ‘Warsaw Conspiracy’ involves officials worked for the Warsaw municipal office between 1995 and 2000 and are based on evidence taken from the murdered former sports minister, Jacek Dębski, who died in 2001. The names of those being charged will be revealed shortly.
This is a part of a crack-down on what the minister called a Warsaw Conspiracy based on links between local leaders, businessmen and the organized crime world.
In Dębski, journals, among others things, he wrote about his corrupt contacts with Bogdan Tyszkiewicz, former chairman of the Centrum district of the capital city of Warsaw, who was also murdered in 2005, writes Wprost magazine.
On the basis of evidence gained from Dębski’s dairies public prosecutors have managed to get testimony from the arrested officials.
Many of Tyszkiewicz’s contacts with the criminal world also came to light after the prosecutors analysed hisdiary, in which he meticulously noted down his meetings and the amounts of bribes – both given and taken.
Former Minister Dębski was also familiar with the details of contacts between Warsaw local authorities and the gangster world. This has been confirmed by witnesses’ testimonies, it is believed.
Among the charged, as weekly Wprost reveals, there will be former vice-major of the Centrum district Paweł Bujalski.
Former sports minister died in the early hours April 12, 2001, in hospital on Szaserуw Street from a shot to the head. His case has yet to be resolved following the suicide of the prime suspect, a gangster from the Pruszkow ‘mafia’.