WARSAW, Poland — A former Polish justice minister sought in his homeland for alleged abuse of power says he has traveled from Hungary to the U.S., prompting prosecutors in Poland to say Monday that they’re investigating whether he was assisted in evading liability.
Zbigniew Ziobro was a key figure in the government led by the nationalist conservative Law and Justice party that ran Poland between 2015 and 2023. That administration established political control over key judicial institutions by stacking higher courts with friendly judges and punishing its critics with disciplinary action or assignments to faraway locations.
Ziobro announced in January that he had been granted asylum in Hungary, then led by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
On Sunday, Ziobro told right-wing Polish broadcaster Republika that he had arrived in the United States the previous day — coinciding with the inauguration in Budapest of Orbán’s successor, Péter Magyar, who defeated the longtime leader in an election last month. He said that he was using a document granted to him along with his right to asylum, Polish news agency PAP reported.
Current Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government came to power in late 2023 with ambitions to roll back the judicial changes made by its predecessor, but efforts to undo them have been blocked by two successive presidents aligned with the nationalist right.
In October, prosecutors requested the lifting of Ziobro’s parliamentary immunity to press charges against him. They allege among other things that Ziobro misused a fund for victims of violence, including for the purchase of Israeli Pegasus surveillance software.
Tusk’s party says Law and Justice used Pegasus to spy illegally on political opponents while in power. Ziobro says he acted lawfully.
On Monday, the national prosecutor’s office said in a social media post that it was investigating the whereabouts of Ziobro, and looking into whether other individuals assisted him in “fleeing and evading criminal liability, thereby obstructing the investigation into the justice fund.”
Current Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek said in a post on X Sunday evening that Poland had invalidated Ziobro’s travel documents, including his diplomatic passport, and that Warsaw will ask the U.S. and Hungary about the legal basis for Ziobro to leave Hungarian territory and enter the United States.
Ziobro’s travels raise the possibility of tension between Warsaw and Washington.
Polish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maciej Wewiór told The Associated Press that “we don’t want this issue to become political.”
“Our relationship with the U.S. goes much deeper than what happens with Ziobro,” he said. “But we do want our citizen to eventually return to Poland and face justice.”