Referral of senior officials to Poland’s State Tribunal is similar to the process of impeachment in some other countries.
The Polish parliamentary probe led by Marcin Horała, from the governing conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, got under way after the lower house last July voted to launch an investigation into extensive suspected tax irregularities.
Horała said at the time that a probe was needed to check former senior officials and others who oversaw the VAT collection system under the Civic Platform-led government, which governed Poland from 2007 to 2015.
Horała’s inquiry has questioned leading figures including Donald Tusk, who after his period as Poland’s prime minister became president of the European Council, a top EU office.
Tusk has claimed that the parliamentary inquiry is politically motivated. He has told the probe that Poland did not stand out among other European countries in terms of failings in collecting VAT from 2007 to 2015.
But Horała said on Monday: "As the head of government, Donald Tusk submitted to parliament draft amendments to the law on VAT which under the guise of abolishing unnecessary administrative barriers caused leakage in the tax system.
“Then he did not initiate legislative work on legal measures which in other European Union countries led to tax crime being damped down," Horała added.
In a draft report by his commission unveiled on Monday, Horała said similar accusations could be levelled against ex-Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz, and former finance ministers Jacek Rostowski and Mateusz Szczurek.
The first witness of Horała’s special parliamentary commission was Witold Modzelewski, one of the architects of Poland’s value-added tax system and deputy finance minister from 1992 to 1996.
He told investigators in September last year that the so-called VAT gap ballooned in Poland between 2007 and 2015, leading to billions of zlotys in losses for public coffers.
Poland lost hundreds of billions in uncollected taxes under its previous Civic Platform-led government, according to a report released by a tax advisory firm run by Modzelewski.
(pk/gs)
Source: PAP