Two Warsaw City Hall officials dismissed over reprivatization controversy

On September 9, Jarosław Jóźwiak and Jacek Wojciechowicz, deputy mayors of Warsaw, have been dismissed "in charge of real estate and zoning respectively", Warsaw’s mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz announced on Thursday. The wake of a scandal came over the restitution by City Hall of a prime piece of land in the Polish capital. According to the mayor, the plot was hastily taken and those people involved did not consider all of the circumstances of the case. "I came to the conclusion that our staff did not perform the proper due diligence. Therefore, the decision to transfer the plot was hastily taken. And this is why all of those who kept us updated on the case misled us, me included, and will be dismissed," Gronkiewicz-Waltz said in August. Earlier, PiS MP Jarosław Krajewski blamed Warsaw's mayor, claiming that "only Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz carrys full responsibility for reprivatization in Warsaw in the years 2007-2016." An estimated 20,000-24,000 private buildings were taken from their owners in October 1945 without any compensation. Since the fall of communism in Poland in 1989 it has been possible to submit claims for the return of such confiscated property.