Poland’s Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA) detained 25 people on Wednesday in connection with an investigation into the construction of a new unit at the Ostrołęka Power Plant, covering the years 2018-2019. The financial loss is said to exceed PLN 1 billion. Searches were also carried out, including at the homes of lawmakers from Law and Justice (PiS), which a spokesman for the party described as another stage of repression.
Tomasz Siemoniak, the minister coordinating the special services, said Wednesday that CBA agents had detained 25 people in the Ostrołęka Power Plant case on the orders of a prosecutor from the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Białystok.
The detentions are linked to an investigation into the investment in a new unit at the Ostrołęka Power Plant. The case concerns damage caused by incompetence and failure to fulfill duties by members of management and supervisory boards. The investigation, which covers 2018-2019, concerns actions to the detriment of the companies Elektrownia Ostrołęka, Enea SA and Energa SA.
Siemoniak said the financial loss is estimated to exceed PLN 1 billion.
Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek said at a later news conference that prosecutors would not disclose the names of those detained. He noted that they are chief executives, deputy chief executives, and members of management and supervisory boards of the companies that suffered the greatest losses in what he called a multibillion-zloty scandal.
“I know that two of them are lawmakers, but I can’t say anything about that,” he added.
Asked whether the detentions involve PiS politicians, he noted that the allegations in the case concern the period when PiS was in power and when financial abuses took place.
“I don’t want to prejudge, but the dates of the financial abuses point to the period when the people who are suspected today were in office,” he explained.
He said those detained are suspected, among other things, of failing to fulfill their duties and exceeding their authority in specific companies. The alleged acts include signing a contract to carry out the Ostrołęka C power plant project and ordering work to begin without secured financing, which led to the project being abandoned and caused financial losses to the companies.
According to unofficial information from Onet, obtained from sources close to the prosecutors, searches were carried out at the homes of PiS politicians Krzysztof Tchórzewski and Arkadiusz Czartoryski. Radio Zet, among others, reported that one of those detained is said to be Grzegorz Ksepko, a former deputy chief executive of Energa SA and now the president’s representative on the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS). The lawyer’s wife, Monika Ksepko, confirmed this in a telephone interview with Telewizja Republika this morning.
PiS spokesman Rafał Bochenek, asked by the Polish Press Agency (PAP) about the CBA’s actions, confirmed that such searches took place at the homes of two PiS politicians. He added that CBA agents “probably didn’t quite know themselves what they were looking for after so many years in our lawmakers’ homes, because in the end they found nothing.” He said PiS sees the actions as “pushing the boundary” and as “another stage of repression and harassment of our political camp, which has always sought to strengthen Poland’s energy sovereignty.”
Zbigniew Bogucki, head of the President’s Chancellery, was asked at a briefing about the detention of the president’s KRS representative, Grzegorz Ksepko. He said it was “another attempt to put pressure on people associated with the presidential camp” and “with the side opposed to the government.”
Tchórzewski served as energy minister in the government of Mateusz Morawiecki, who is now leader of Rozwój Plus. The party’s spokesman, Robert Gontarz, asked by PAP for comment, described the actions as a politics of revenge and the pursuit of the opposition.
KRS spokesman Judge Jarosław Łuczaj also addressed the reports in a statement published on X.
“According to media reports, one member of the National Council of the Judiciary, who is not a judge, was detained today by officers of the Central Anticorruption Bureau,” he wrote.
He said that, in light of the reports, the council’s chairman, Judge Dariusz Zawistowski, “has taken steps to determine whether the situation described took place and, if so, what caused it.”
Energy Minister Miłosz Motyka was asked by reporters on Wednesday about the consequences of the detention of Mirosław Kowalik, head of Westinghouse in Poland, for negotiations on the contract to build a nuclear power plant. He stressed: “This is an action by an independent prosecutor’s office (…). But it will certainly have no effect on the negotiation process. We are in contact with the American side, so we see no risks here.”
During the years covered by the investigation, Mirosław Kowalik was chief executive of Enea. Westinghouse, together with Bechtel, is part of the contractor consortium for Poland’s first nuclear power plant, which is to be built in the municipality of Choczewo in Pomerania.
Energa began work on the project for a new coal-fired unit at the Ostrołęka Power Plant in 2009. In September 2012, the company halted it because it could not secure financing from the market. Energa concluded that only the participation of a strategic partner would make construction possible. In the fall of 2016, Enea bought half of the shares in the project. In the spring of 2018, a consortium of GE Power and Alstom won the tender to build a 1,000 MW hard-coal unit for just over PLN 6 billion. The order to begin construction work was issued at the end of 2018, but construction was suspended in the spring of 2020.
In June 2020, Enea and Energa decided to continue the investment, but after converting the technology to one that burns natural gas to produce electricity. They also signed a three-party agreement with PKN Orlen, which has been Energa’s majority owner since the end of April 2020, setting out the future roles of all parties in the project.
In December 2020, Enea decided it would not take part in building the gas-fired plant. Also in December 2020, a new investment agreement was concluded among the project’s new sponsors: Energa, Orlen and PGNiG. In January 2021, a new special-purpose company, CCGT Ostrołęka Sp. z o.o., was established to build the gas-fired plant, with Energa and Orlen holding a combined 51% stake and PGNiG 49%. In April 2021, the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) approved the creation of CCGT Ostrołęka. In March 2021, demolition began of the previously built elements of the plant’s coal unit.
In May 2022, Civic Coalition (KO) lawmakers Dariusz Joński and Michał Szczerba, then in the opposition, said that “the construction of the coal unit at the Ostrołęka Power Plant is a scam worth PLN 1.3 billion, which everyone paid for in their electricity bills.” (PAP)
