RUSSIA AND Poland’s new-found solidarity is under severe strain following claims that Russian soldiers stole the credit cards of one of the victims of April’s air crash that wiped out much of Poland’s leadership.
Polish authorities said Russia had detained four soldiers on suspicion of looting credit cards from the body of Andrzej Przewoznik, a historian and top Polish official.
Mr Przewoznik died with 95 other people, including Poland’s president Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria, when their aircraft went down in thick fog near Smolensk airport in western Russia.
According to Warsaw, Mr Przewoznik’s card was used to withdraw money from a cashpoint within hours of the catastrophe. Further withdrawals were made from four Smolensk cash machines over the next two days.
His widow raised the alarm when she discovered about 6,000 zloty (€1,446) had vanished from her dead husband’s bank account.
Polish television reported yesterday that credit cards belonging to another air crash victim, Aleksandra Natalli-Swiat, the deputy head of the Law and Justice party, had also disappeared. No transactions were recorded, however.
Poland’s government spokesman Pawel Gras initially blamed Russia’s Omon riot police for the thefts. Yesterday he said the culprits had been arrested following a fast-moving joint investigation.
“The three Omon officers who did this shameful deed were detained with lightning speed thanks to co-operation between the [Polish] internal security agency and Russian special services,” Mr Gras said.
His comments provoked an apoplectic reaction from Russia’s interior ministry, which said its officers had been wrongly accused.
Describing the allegation as “cynical, sacrilegious and fictive”, Nikolai Turbovets, head of the Smolensk region’s crime police, said no Omon riot police officers had been arrested, nor had any crimes been committed at the crash scene. Poland has clarified that those arrested were soldiers rather than police. Nevertheless, the row threatens to undermine the genuine closeness that has blossomed between Russia and Poland in the crash’s aftermath.
The Kremlin gave unprecedented assistance and access to Polish investigators, while Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, flew to Smolensk with his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk. Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev attended the funeral of Mr Kaczynski and his wife in Krakow.
– ( Guardianservice)