WARSAW (Reuters) -A former Polish justice minister accused of abuse of power has offered to be questioned in Hungary or Belgium, his lawyer told Rzeczpospolita daily in comments published late on Tuesday, a move that would allow him to avoid pre-trial detention.
His offer illustrates the difficulties Polish authorities may face in their pursuit of Zbigniew Ziobro, who served as justice minister in the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government from 2015 to 2023, after lawmakers stripped him of his immunity on Friday.
Ziobro, who is wanted by prosecutors on 26 charges including heading an organised criminal group, is currently in Hungary and may follow the example of one of his deputies, Marcin Romanowski, in asking for political asylum there.
The former minister says the allegations against him are part of a witch hunt orchestrated by the government in revenge for actions he took targeting suspected corruption among people close to Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Ziobro’s lawyer Bartosz Lewandowski said prosecutors had an address for him in Brussels, where his wife has been working in the European Parliament, and in Hungary.
“We proposed that he be questioned through the consular office or through international assistance, meaning such proceedings should be conducted remotely,” he told Rzeczpospolita.
Deputy Interior Minister Czeslaw Mroczek told state news channel TVP Info on Wednesday that prosecutors would likely request a European Arrest Warrant for Ziobro soon meaning Brussels will no longer be a place where Ziobro could “dictate terms or make deals with the prosecutor’s office”.
Poland has already issued a European Arrest Warrant for Romanowski.
Among the crimes Ziobro is accused of is the misuse of money from the Justice Fund, which is designed to help victims of crime, to purchase the Pegasus spyware system.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a nationalist who had close ties to the former PiS administration, met Ziobro last month in Budapest and accused the current Tusk government of launching a “political witch hunt” against Ziobro.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz, Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
