The WSI controversy rages on

The report on the former military information services (WSI), whose February 16 publication  set off a political storm, has caused a major stir in Polish business as well, especially the media sector. The report states that the WSI, dissolved for organizing activities harmful to the state, had influence on the Polish media, including sector giant the ITI Group.

According to the document, ITI maintained a relationship with the post-communist secret services, which wanted to create a TV station as a means of sending agents to the West. The evidence for the claim comes from Grzegorz Żemek, a former the director of the Foreign Debt Servicing Fund (FOZZ), who was sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud, for his part in Poland's foreign debt pay-off scandal of a few years ago. Żemek made his statement under oath in court.

ITI representatives called the report's content "a blatant lie" and announced that it would sue anyone who taints the company's good name. "The management board of ITI decided to take legal action against [the report's author] Mr Antoni Macierewicz," announced ITI's president Wojciech Kostrzewa in an official press release. He added that Grzegorz Żemek's testimony should not be considered reliable.

Antoni Macierewicz, the head of the Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW) who oversaw the WSI's liquidation and the subsequent report on the matter, maintains the claims made in the document. "Many of you [journalists] do not want to see the dangers of WSI penetration. You prefer to see the dangers that follow from Antoni Macierewicz," he argued in an interview for the Rzeczpospolita daily.