Wroclaw Scandal Poses Legal Threat to Tusk Government's EU Credentials and Financials

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Apr 04, 2014, 04:28 ET

BRUSSELS, April 4, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Lawyers representing the Berlin based company K.u.K. Internationale Logistic, Handels und Beteiligungs Gmbh have initiated formal legal proceedings against Mr Kalecinski the District Prosecutor of Wroclaw and the local Tax office, suing for more than 10 billion euros in damages.

K.u.K.'s lawyers allege that Mr Kalecinski has failed to supply any legal warrants for the seizure of property owned by K.u.K., for the freezing of company bank accounts or seizure of company offices in Wroclaw following raids by the Prosecutor's office in November of last year. Prosecutor Kalecinski claims to have sent by letter details of the charges to K.u.K.'s lawyers, but so far nothing has been received despite requests to the Court requiring Mr Kalecinski to produce evidence of the documents being delivered by mail.

The Court has failed to instruct Prosecutor Kalecinski to produce these documents or evidence of delivering them to K.u.K.'s legal counsel. K.u.K.'s legal team have therefore set a deadline for Mr Kalecinski to provide full documentation justifying his actions by 16th April, and to return to the Company all corporate property and assets held by his office by that date.

In the meanwhile after more than 5 months, 6 innocent employees of K.u.K. are held on pre-trial bail without any formal charges having been filed. It appears that Prosecutor Kalecinski has alleged criminal misdemeanour on the part of these employees to the Court, whilst at the same time disputing the calculation of tax payments by K.u.K. due to the Polish Finance Ministry - which is an economic, and not a criminal matter. The German holding company has repeatedly offered to settle any tax payments outstanding from its Polish subsidiaries, but has still received no response to these offers from the Wroclaw tax authorities.

"This irresponsible, and unaccountable behaviour is something a company might have expected in the soviet era before Poland's democratic independence, but it is unacceptable in 21st century Poland," a K.u.K. spokesman said.

Apparently, this kind of treatment of companies in Poland is not isolated. In a recent book "The White Lake" written by John Borrell, the behaviour of Polish public prosecutors comes under scrutiny. The findings of his book suggest that there is significant room for reform in Poland. "Polish law allows for pre-trial detention of up to two years, longer in special circumstances and many public prosecutors use it as a means of extracting "confessions" or simply to punish people they lack evidence to prosecute in court. Bureaucrats, public prosecutors and judges are never held accountable for wrongly depriving people of their liberty. As a result more than 95% of requests by public prosecutors for pre-trial detention are approved by judges."

"This kind of behaviour is out of line with practice in the rest of Europe and it must change. Reform of these procedures is overdue, and we shall pursue change of policy at the highest level," the company spokesman for K.u.K. International said.

"K.u.K.'s lawyers will first exhaust due process through the Polish courts, and if necessary will apply to the courts in Germany for justice and remedies," he went on to say.

At stake is the continued operation of K.u.K. International's business in Poland, the employment of the company's staff, compensation of more than 10 billion euros and the principle of fair trial within a reasonable period of time for citizens who are held on suspicion of an offence, without any charges or evidence being submitted to the Court. This is a fundamental human right, which Poland is bound to respect under the terms of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights which Poland signed when it joined the EU 10 years ago.