Pressure on Kaczynski mounts after release of recordings on dealing with property developer

Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s reputation as a politician far removed from the murky world of business has long been one of his biggest political assets. But as Poland gears up for elections this year, its de facto leader has come under fire from opponents after secret recordings emerged of him negotiating with an Austrian property developer.

This week Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s main centre-left daily, published recordings of Mr Kaczynski discussing a project to build a skyscraper in central Warsaw on land owned by a company controlled by his associates.

Financing was to come from state-controlled bank Pekao. The plan was quietly shelved last summer and the tapes, dating from July and August, record meetings involving Mr Kaczynski and Gerald Birgfellner, an Austrian businessman.

Mr Birgfellner had been working on the project and complained he had not been paid. Mr Kaczynski, head of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, is heard arguing that the project would be unlikely to get approval from the city authorities unless Law and Justice won local elections and that the scheme was too risky from a political perspective.

“There is a clearly political campaign, [saying] that the party is building a skyscraper . . . or even that I’m building it — and that therefore I am an extremely wealthy person. We can’t allow this. Therefore we have to give up this investment,” Mr Kaczynski is heard to say. Law and Justice has denied the recordings show that the party breached rules preventing political parties from carrying out economic activity, while Mr Kaczynski’s political allies have rushed to defend him from accusations of personal wrongdoing.

Mateusz Morawiecki, prime minister, said the recordings showed Mr Kaczynski’s “completely honest behaviour” and that the furore surrounding them was a “manipulation” that was “probably one the biggest unexploded shells since the second world war”. However, opposition parties have seized on the tapes. Civic Platform on Thursday filed a complaint with Poland’s anti-corruption agency, urging it to review Mr Kaczynski’s financial declarations. “In politics, credibility is most important, and the worst thing to do is cheat your own voters. What [the tapes] reveal is an attempt to cheat one’s own voters, hide some facts, [and] keep some myths about Kaczynski’s fairness and modesty,” said Cezary Tomczyk, from Civic Platform.

via FT