Polish parliament strips opposition MP of immunity over Pegasus spyware purchase

The government’s majority in parliament has voted to strip an opposition MP, Michał Woś, of legal immunity so that he can face prosecution for his role in the purchase of Pegasus spyware when he was part of the former Law and Justice (PiS) government.

In a vote today, 240 members of the 460-seat Sejm approved the request to lift Woś’s immunity, which was submitted last month by prosecutor general Adam Bodnar, who also serves as justice minister.

Bodnar wants Woś to face charges of abusing his power and abusing trust – crimes carrying a prison sentence of up to ten years – in relation to his use of a justice ministry fund to finance the purchase of Pegasus when he was a deputy minister.

Prosecutor general @Adbodnar, who also serves as justice minister, has asked parliament to strip an opposition MP of immunity so he can face charges over his role in the purchase of Pegasus spyware when he was part of the former PiS government https://t.co/M2AIVEiY3v

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 28, 2024

Today, all 240 votes for Woś’s immunity to be lifted came from the ruling coalition. The 192 against came from PiS itself as well as two other right-wing opposition groups, Confederation (Konfederacja) and Kukiz’15.

Woś himself denies that he committed any crime and declared yesterday that he was a victim of “political repression” by the government.

A politician from the ruling coalition, Bogdan Klich, however, responded to Woś’s claims of politician repression by quoting him the words of his former boss at the justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, who said: “Honest people have nothing to fear.”

How MPs from each caucus voted on the question of lifting Woś’s immunity (za = for, przeciw = against, wstrzymało się = abstained, nie głosowało = did not vote)

The charges relate to a decision made in 2017 to transfer 25 million zloty from the Justice Fund to the Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA) to finance the purchase of Pegasus, powerful Israel-made spyware that allows the harvesting of data from mobile devices.

When requesting that Woś’s immunity be lifted, Bodnar said that those funds were transferred despite “it being known that the [CBA] did not meet the conditions for obtaining such financial support”. Woś therefore failed to fulfil his duties regarding managing public funds.

In April, Bodnar revealed that hundreds of people had been surveilled using Pegasus during PiS’s time in power. Some of those targets were prominent opponents of the government, including the manager of the opposition’s election campaign in 2019.

Pegasus spyware was used to surveil 578 people under the former PiS government, reports the justice minister.

Though many targets were legitimate, there were also cases where Pegasus was used against figures „inconvenient” for PiS, says another minister https://t.co/JBxMTeUSxR

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 16, 2024

Separately an investigation set up by Bodnar has found what it claims are numerous irregularities in the disbursement of the Justice Fund, including its use for clearly political purposes. The fund is meant to be used by the justice ministry to support victims of crime, to prevent crime, and to rehabilitate criminals.

As a result, Bodnar is also seeking to lift the immunity of another former deputy justice minister and now opposition MP, Marcin Romanowski. A vote on that issue is likely to take place next week.

Both Woś and Romanowski are members of Sovereign Poland (Suwerenna Polska), a hard-right party led by Ziobro and which is allied with the national-conservative PiS,

The justice minister has asked parliament to lift the immunity of an opposition MP so he can face 11 charges relating to his time as a minister in the former PiS government.

He is accused of offences including participation in an organised criminal group https://t.co/S8m2Eq56S7

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) June 19, 2024

In a vote immediately after the one relating to Woś, parliament rejected a request from police to lift the immunity of Anita Kucharska-Dziedzic, an MP from the ruling coalition, for placing protest posters on PiS party headquarters without permission.

This time, the voting was reversed, with all votes in favour of lifting her immunity coming from PiS and most of those against it coming from the ruling coalition, who were also joined by Confederation and Kukiz’15.

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Main image credit: MS (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.