Kaczyński, who leads Poland’s conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, appeared as a witness at the District Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw. The hearing began at 10 a.m. and ended after 7 p.m., state news agency PAP reported.
The case concerns failed plans to build two skyscrapers in Warsaw on land owned by Srebrna, a company linked to PiS.
Prosecutors are investigating whether Austrian businessman Gerald Birgfellner was misled into making financial commitments worth at least EUR 1.3 million between May 2017 and July 2018.
Piotr Antoni Skiba, a spokesman for the District Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw, said the questioning took place in a "good atmosphere," although "as in a good courtroom drama, there were certain frictions at one point" that did not affect the course of the hearing.
Skiba said Kaczyński stated at the start that he regarded the prosecutor questioning him as "an illegal person," but agreed to testify because the record of the hearing would serve as evidence “in the further fight to restore the rule of law.”
Kaczyński attended the hearing with two lawyers. At the start, he and his legal team asked prosecutors to exclude Roman Giertych, one of Birgfellner’s lawyers, from the questioning, but the request was rejected.
Skiba said the prosecutor handling the case had informed him that no further procedural steps were planned for now. Kaczyński left the building at around 7 p.m. without speaking to reporters.
Jacek Dubois, another lawyer representing Birgfellner, said it had taken seven-and-a-half years to bring Kaczyński in for questioning.
He accused "Zbigniew Ziobro’s prosecutor’s office" of doing everything possible to avoid clarifying the case when PiS was in power.
"We are happy that this questioning is over, because this proceeding concerns Jarosław Kaczyński as a potential suspect," Dubois said. He added that such a person is usually questioned last before prosecutors make procedural decisions.
"I did not believe most of the words spoken by the witness," Dubois said. He said he hoped prosecutors would reach a similar conclusion because, in his view, the evidence pointed to a different course of events.
The two towers case first drew broad public attention in 2019, when the daily Gazeta Wyborcza published recordings and transcripts of conversations involving Kaczyński and Birgfellner about the planned Warsaw development.
The newspaper later reported that Birgfellner had testified that Kaczyński urged him to hand PLN 50,000 to a priest sitting on the board of a foundation that owns Srebrna.
In 2019, when Ziobro was both justice minister and prosecutor general, Warsaw prosecutors refused to open an investigation.
They said Birgfellner had not provided documents confirming the costs he claimed to have incurred or written contracts that would allow invoices to be verified.
Birgfellner’s lawyers challenged that decision, arguing that prosecutors had taken almost nine months to respond, while criminal procedure rules require a decision on whether to open an investigation within 30 days of a complaint being filed.
In February 2020, the Warsaw Regional Court upheld the refusal to open the case.
The matter was later included in an audit by the National Public Prosecutor’s Office covering selected proceedings from 2016 to 2023, when the United Right, led by PiS, governed Poland.
Prosecutor Katarzyna Kwiatkowska said at the time that the two towers case should have been taken up and continued, and that the earlier handling of the matter raised serious doubts.
Prosecutors opened the current investigation in February 2025. Kaczyński said at the time that the move was part of a political fight against his party and argued that the planned development had remained "in the sphere of intentions," which he said was not a crime.
The spokesman said Kaczyński answered all questions and did not once use his right to refuse an answer if it could expose him to criminal liability. The record of the hearing ran to 40 pages.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP