Poland’s prosecutor general and justice minister Waldemar Żurek announced on Tuesday, October 28th that he had requested parliament to lift the legal immunity of his predecessor, Zbigniew Ziobro, a key figure of the former conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government.
The move underscores the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of the left-liberal government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which has used the justice system as a political weapon against its conservative rivals.
According to Żurek’s office, prosecutors have gathered sufficient evidence to conclude with “high probability … that Zbigniew Ziobro committed 26 crimes” during his tenure as justice minister, including establishing and leading a criminal group and abusing public funds for personal and political gain.
The alleged crimes relate to the management of the Justice Fund, a state fund created to support victims of crime.
Prosecutors are seeking Ziobro’s arrest and pretrial detention, claiming a risk of obstruction of justice. Anna Adamiak, spokesperson for the General Prosecutor’s Office, told a press conference that 150 million zloty (around €35 million) had been misappropriated and that the charges carry a maximum sentence of up to 25 years in prison.
There are no sacred cows
Żurek wrote on X, presenting the request as a step toward accountability.
Given the government’s parliamentary majority, the move is expected to pass easily.
PiS politicians called the accusations a “political farce” aimed at silencing the conservative opposition.
“This is not justice—it is the terror of political revenge,” wrote former defence minister Mariusz Błaszczak on X, adding that the Justice Fund “supported volunteer fire brigades, crime victims, and public safety initiatives,” and that the government was trying to “turn this into a crime.”
Ziobro has denied any wrongdoing, and has accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s left-liberal government of pursuing a “political vendetta.”
On Monday evening, he appeared in Budapest at the screening of a documentary on the political persecution of Poland’s conservative opposition, and the Tusk government’s abuses.
The latest move comes amid a sweeping campaign targeting former PiS officials, which has included the arrests of ex-ministers, the lifting of MPs’ immunity, and the seizure of public media and the prosecutor’s office.
Last year, police raided Ziobro’s home, and last month he was detained at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport and escorted by force to a parliamentary commission investigating the Pegasus spyware affair.
Two of his former deputies, Michał Woś and Marcin Romanowski, have also faced prosecution—Romanowski later fled to Hungary, where he was granted political asylum after Budapest concluded that he could not receive a fair trial in Poland.
The European Commission, once vocal about the alleged “rule-of-law” breaches under PiS, has remained silent as the Tusk government prosecutes its political rivals and undermines judicial independence. While the EU previously froze billions in funds under PiS, those same funds were promptly released after Tusk’s return to power.
Zoltán Kottász is a journalist for europeanconservative.com, based in Budapest. He worked for many years as a journalist and as the editor of the foreign desk at the Hungarian daily, Magyar Nemzet. He focuses primarily on European politics.
