The 63-year-old is wanted by Poland over large-scale financial fraud. He has a six-year prison sentence to serve, after 170 investors lost about PLN 33 million (EUR 7.65 million, USD 8.9 million) in a company that operated as a pyramid scheme.
Polish authorities had already been seeking Bagsik under a domestic arrest warrant. A court ordered his temporary detention in 2020, while police have sought him over fraud and money laundering allegations.
Bagsik first became one of Poland’s best-known businessmen during the chaotic transition from communism to a market economy in the early 1990s.
He founded the Art-B company in the southern town of Cieszyn in 1989 and rapidly built it into a large corporation together with his business partner Andrzej Gąsiorowski.
Much of the later Art-B case centered on a financial mechanism known as check kiting.
Art-B deposited money in a bank, obtained bank-guaranteed checks against it and quickly deposited those checks at other banks.
Bank information still moved largely offline, sometimes by post or courier. That delay meant the same funds could appear to remain on deposit at several banks at the same time, earning interest more than once.
Hyperinflation magnified the sums involved, making Bagsik and Gąsiorowski wealthy within a short period, according to Polish state news agency PAP.
Bagsik was ranked eighth on a 1991 list of Poland’s richest people.
Art-B had earlier stepped in to support the struggling Ursus tractor factory by buying up a year’s production.
But the company’s growing influence came under scrutiny in July 1991, when then-Prime Minister Jan Krzysztof Bielecki visited the plant and publicly criticized Art-B’s role.
The scandal was estimated to have cost about 3 trillion old zloty, equivalent to PLN 300 million after Poland’s 1995 currency redenomination.
Bagsik was arrested in Switzerland in 1994 and extradited to Poland in 1996.
In 2000, he was sentenced to nine years in prison over the Art-B affair and other offenses. He was released on parole in 2004 after serving about two-thirds of the sentence.
After his release, Bagsik became involved with Digit Serve Ltd., which offered investments but was found to have operated as a pyramid scheme.
A court initially sentenced him to five years in prison. A later ruling increased the sentence to six years.
Gąsiorowski, meanwhile, remained in Israel until 2014, when the statute of limitations expired, the PAP news agency reported.
The affair also acquired a political dimension.
Maciej Zalewski, an official in President Lech Wałęsa's office and a politician with the Centre Agreement (Porozumienie Centrum), was later convicted of warning Bagsik and Gąsiorowski that they were about to be arrested, according to the PAP report. The two men left Poland for Israel in 1991.
Bogusław Bagsik (centre) and Andrzej Gąsiorowski (left), pictured in 1991. Photo: PAP
The Centre Agreement was a Christian Democratic party formed in 1990 from the political movement that grew out of the Solidarity trade union.
Its leading figure was Jarosław Kaczyński, who later co-founded the Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Art-B had earlier provided financial support to Telegraf, a company associated with Centre Agreement figures.
Bagsik was arrested in Switzerland in 1994 and extradited to Poland in 1996.
In 2000, he was sentenced to nine years in prison over the Art-B affair and other offenses. He was released on parole in 2004 after serving about two-thirds of the sentence.
After his release, Bagsik became involved with Digit Serve Ltd., which offered investments but was found to have operated as a pyramid scheme.
A court initially sentenced him to five years in prison. A later ruling increased the sentence to six years.
A Red Notice is an international request to police forces to locate and provisionally arrest a wanted person, usually pending extradition or similar legal proceedings.
It is issued by the International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, at the request of a member country.
It is not an international arrest warrant. Interpol has no police officers who can make arrests, and authorities in each member country decide what action they can take under their own laws.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP
Note: This article is based on a Sept. 4, 2026 report by Polish state news agency PAP, and the facts and information contained in it were sourced from the original Polish version. However, under Polish press law, we have been asked to publish the following correction:
"CORRECTION
The statement that Andrzej Gąsiorowski's case ended in 2014 because it was time-barred is false. By a final decision of 7 February 2014, case VI Ds. 48/14, the prosecutor discontinued the proceedings against him concerning the so-called check-kiting mechanism. He was not convicted in connection with the alleged PLN 300 million loss, and it is false to attribute that loss to him. The Red Notice described in the article concerns Bogusław Bagsik, not Mr Gąsiorowski. Mr Gąsiorowski was not warned by Maciej Zalewski of a planned arrest and did not leave for Israel as a result of such a warning. Mr Gąsiorowski did not found Art-B with Bogusław Bagsik. He joined the company later, in 1989.
Andrzej Gąsiorowski"