Poland’s Personal Data Protection Office (UODO) said on Tuesday that its head, Mirosław Wróblewski, imposed the administrative fine after proceedings concerning the scandal, which erupted while Ziobro was justice minister.
The office did not identify Ziobro by name when announcing the fine, referring only to "the justice minister."
The case concerns allegations that people linked to the justice ministry used confidential personnel data to attack judges who opposed judicial changes introduced by the then-ruling United Right government.
The United Right was the conservative coalition led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which governed Poland from 2015 to 2023.
UODO said the justice minister, as the data controller, failed to introduce safeguards that would have prevented unlawful processing of judges’ personal data obtained from ministry personnel files.
It also said the minister failed to properly supervise authorizations granted to employees who later used the data for “political and private purposes.”
The office said the fact that the data controller was the justice minister, a constitutional state authority that also oversees the prosecution system, was an aggravating factor.
The office said the violations involved sensitive categories of data, including information about judges’ health, political views and organizational affiliations. It said some information was passed to unauthorized people, including public officials and journalists, and was also published online.
According to UODO, one social media account used to post sensitive material was created through an IP address assigned to the justice ministry.
Dariusz Mazur, a deputy justice minister in Prime Minister Donald Tusk's centrist government, said the decision "confirms that personal data of judges collected at the justice ministry" under Ziobro "were used for harassment, propaganda and political struggle.”
“The most important part is still ahead of us. The perpetrators must be judged and, if their guilt is confirmed, punished by the court,” Mazur wrote on X.
The administrative proceedings began in 2019, after media reports about the scandal.
UODO said Ziobro’s ministry initially responded that an internal inquiry had found no personal data leak. The office said this was contradicted by later prosecutorial findings and hindered its own investigation.
Zbigniew Ziobro. Photo: Art Service/PAP
UODO said it had sought information from prosecutors for years before the Wrocław Regional Prosecutor’s Office provided evidence in December 2024. The authority said the material was sufficient to confirm that public officials had breached judges’ personal data.
The 2019 scandal centered on reports that then-Deputy Justice Minister Łukasz Piebiak had contact with a woman named Emilia, who allegedly helped organize online attacks against selected judges, including Krystian Markiewicz, then head of the Iustitia judges’ association.
Reports also described a closed WhatsApp group called “Kasta,” where ideas for discrediting judges were allegedly discussed. Piebiak resigned after the allegations were published.
Prosecutors have said 21 judges were victims in the case. Judges linked to the alleged scheme, including Piebiak, have denied wrongdoing in media statements, saying claims about the scandal and excerpts from online messages were false and manipulated.
UODO said a financial penalty was unavoidable because the breaches were serious and struck at basic principles of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the bloc’s main privacy law.
(rt/gs)
Sources: PAP, uodo.gov.pl