Former Polish deputy minister fleeing corruption charges gets job from organisation heavily funded by Hungarian government

Marcin Romanowski, the former Polish Deputy Justice Minister accused at home of serious corruption and granted asylum in Hungary, has been employed by the Center for Fundamental Rights, an organization heavily funded by the Hungarian government.

According to the website of the Center for Fundamental Rights, Romanowski has become the head of the newly established Hungarian-Polish Institute of Freedom. The website states that the institute was established by the Center for Fundamental Rights to research "to explore the enduring values that form the foundation of our legal and political systems, and which have united our countries across centuries and political regimes. However, the just a few sentences later it becomes clear that the institute is essentially the Hungarian voice of the Polish right wing, which was forced into opposition in the fall 2023 parliamentary elections, and whose political platform is as follows:

“Poland has become a testing ground in which the fundamental values of Western civilization are being challenged and continually attacked. The Institute is committed to analyzing these trends and developing effective early warning mechanisms for defending the freedom and identity of our nations.”

The institute's inaugural study unsurprisingly reveals “what methods the Hungarian globalist side, led by Péter Magyar, would use if they were to win a majority in the 2026 parliamentary elections.”

The Center for Fundamental Rights compared Romanowski to refugees from the 1939 German-Soviet invasion of Poland: “Just as 86 years ago Hungary opened its heart to Polish refugees, so it does again today. The Institute is now headed by Marcin Romanowski, a lawyer and former Deputy Minister of Justice, who has found refuge in Hungary”.

Except that Romanowski was not fleeing Hitler's or Stalin's armies, but his own corruption cases when he sought refuge in Hungary. A member of the Catholic fundamentalist Opus Dei, which requires its members to remain celibate, he was charged in Poland with 18 criminal offences, including participation in an organized criminal group responsible for the misappropriation of state assets. He was accused of this in connection with tenders announced by the Justice Fund, an organization that was supposed to assist in the reintegration of convicts but in fact served as a cash cow for the right-wing populist government that ruled until 2023. PiS politicians and Romanowski himself consider the official proceedings against him to be unlawful, even though, as our detailed article on the case also noted, even Jarosław Kaczyński, a powerful figure in the former ruling party, has also expressed doubts about the foundation's operations.

Romanowski fled to Hungary last December, where he was granted political asylum. The Hungarian government even amended a law to protect him and was willing to risk the deterioration of its already poor relations with the Polish government led by Donald Tusk. The government's reasoning was that the Polish politician would not receive fair treatment in his home country.

In early April, the Polish prosecutor's office issued a European investigation order against Romanowski, but Interpol recently declined to put him on its “wanted” list, and in line with the organizaton's usual procedures, did not disclose the reasons for its decision.

(via Hvg.hu)