Court gags newspaper over PZU scandal

Following a report by Rzeczpospolita daily on the top management of insurer PZU, and how they cooperated with Andrzej Perczyński to withdraw company funds and invest them in illegal private bank accounts, the Warsaw court has forbidden the daily to publish any information, private or professional, about Perczyński. The ban will last for the duration of the court case, which could be up to two years. Rzeczpospolita learnt about the ban unofficially, as the court has not yet informed Maciej Łukasiewicz, the paper's chief editor. The decision is quite surprising however, as this is the second time that the court has ruled on the prohibition of the publication of information on Perczyński - the previous ruling went a different way. Councilor Andrzej Karpowicz, who specializes in cases relating to the media, thinks that the verdict is unacceptable. "It is very strange that Rzeczpospolita is forbidden from writing about the professional work of a person who is involved in one the largest scandals of recent years," said Grażyna Kopińska, the president of the anticorruption program of the Batory Foundation. (Rzeczpospolita, p. A1) A.K.