POLAND: A corruption scandal in Poland has deepened as the President, Mr Aleksander Kwasniewski, predicted that the Prime Minister, Mr Leszek Miller, would be questioned over allegations that he was behind a request for a multi-million dollar bribe.
"I think that the prime minister will be questioned in this matter, by both the public prosecutor and by a parliamentary committee," Mr Kwasniewski told public radio. He was speaking a day after Poland started a judicial investigation into corruption allegations involving top media figures and politicians by interviewing the head of Poland's leading newspaper.
Mr Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, claims that last July, he was asked for a $17.5 million backhander by Mr Lew Rywin, a top official with Canal Plus Polska, on Mr Miller's behalf. In return, Mr Michnik has claimed, Mr Rywin said the government would amend Poland's broadcasting law, which is under review, in such a way as to allow the publisher of Mr Michnik's newspaper to buy the commercial television station Polsat.
Mr Miller has denied the accusation.
Mr Kwasniewski said he believed a parliamentary committee of inquiry would be set up to investigate the charges and that the affair would have serious political repercussions.
Mr Miller's political party yesterday joined opposition parties in looking for such a committee. "We are interested in a full, transparent and unequivocal elucidation of this matter and to draw the consequences, also on the legal level," Mr Jerzy Jaskiernia, the president of the parliamentary group of the former communist Democratic Left Alliance, told a news conference.
The publisher of Gazeta Wyborcza, Group Agora, reportedly has its eye on Polsat, a private Polish television station, but would be prevented from buying the station under a draft broadcasting law as it currently stands.
Gazeta Wyborcza said on December 27th that Mr Rywin, who also owns the film production house Heritage Films, made the proposal during a meeting with Mr Michnik in July.Mr Michnik, a dissident during Poland's communist era, recorded the discussion with Mr Rywin, the paper said.
Asked at a news conference on Monday why he had not reported the incident to the authorities, Mr Miller said: "Hundreds of people were aware of the matter. Nobody did it, which proves that everyone took it for sheer fantasy."
The fact that the newspaper waited six months to go public has raised eyebrows. - (AFP)