Banks under scrutiny
Last week, the banking investigation commission (BIC) agreed to examine 22 issues and drew up a list of witnesses, which comprises some 200 names, including a former President of Poland and the five last Prime Minsters.
In order to examine the capital and ownership transformations in the banking sector, as well as the functioning of relevant supervisory bodies in the last 17 years, the commission wants to interview the former President of Poland Aleksander Kwaniewski, and five former Prime Ministers: Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Jerzy Buzek, Marek Belka, Leszek Miller and Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. Other prominent people include Zyta Gilowska, Roman Giertych, Marek Borowski and Jan Kulczyk. Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz as well as other witnesses running for seats in local elections are to give evidence after the local elections.
The first issue the commission wants to tackle is a possible conflict of interest between the president of the National Bank of Poland (NBP), Leszek Balcerowicz, and the CASE institute chaired by his wife, Ewa Balcerowicz. CASE is partly financed by banks, while Balcerowicz heads the Banking Supervision Commission (KNB), which takes decisions in respect to banks that sponsor CASE. Balcerowicz denies any irregularities. The commission wanted to interview him on September 14, but he will not be able to testify then, as he will be representing Poland during a meeting of the European Central Bank.
The commission will also examine the privatization of several banks, including Pekao SA, Bank Handlowy, Bank Zachodni, WBK, Bank lšski, PKO BP, ownership transformations at BIG Bank (now Millennium) and the merger between Pekao SA and BPH, as well as the operations of KNB. According to the head of the commission, Artur Zawisza from Law and Justice (PiS), the body should complete its task in May or June next year.
The commission has been criticized as an exercise aimed at destroying individual politicians. Civic Platform (PO) thinks that the powers of this body are too broad and filed a petition to the Constitutional Tribunal (TK) to check whether the establishment of the banking commission was unconstitutional. TK will examine the issue on September 21.
Artur Zawisza is certain that a number of irregularities have taken place in the banking and financial sectors in the last 17 years. "If we refer to the analogy with the skeleton in the closet, then there is a skeleton," he said in May. In the same month, the International Monetary Fund praised Poland's banking sector in a report that said the industry is in good health, fiscal policy is sound, privatization in the financial sector has served Poland well, and banking supervision has been effective.
