PiS' corruption crackdown

After seven months in power the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) is on the verge of introducing a key element of its 'Fourth Republic' - the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA).

Fighting crime and corruption was one of the main election slogans of PiS in its election campaign and Poland is sorely in need of some anti-corruption policy - last year it was ranked the most corrupt EU state by Transparency International.

The CBA proposal was passed by the Sejm and now needs a majority in the Senate to become law.

"All [suspected sleaze] will be of interest to the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau regardless of whether it involves the ruling coalition or the opposition," said the future boss of CBA, Mariusz Kamiński.

Despite these assurances, the opposition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) is afraid that the new organization will be a political tool aimed at gathering information that could be used to discredit PiS' rivals. Opposition Civic Platform is also concerned about the lack of parliamentary control over the agency, whose head will be nominated by the Prime Minister. However, only SLD voted against the bill as other parties reluctantly backed the CBA to demonstrate their willingness to tackle the culture of corruption.

The creation of the CBA proved timely, as last week a corruption scandal was uncovered in the Ministry of Finance. Three high ranking officials were arrested and charged with accepting bribes from a criminal group for illegal tax advisory and remission of tax debts. The bribes taken were worth more than zł.100,000.

"In the Finance Ministry there was a system of cooperation between clerks, criminals, businesspeople and not only them ... Soon we'll discover all involved in these dealings," said the Minister of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro.