Previous gov't ignored tax fraud: report
PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek
05.10.2018 12:54
Documents left by the previous government show that the former finance minister did not deem it necessary to stamp out tax fraud, the Super Express daily has reported.
Ex-Finance Minister Mateusz Szczurek. Photo: Chancellery of the Senate of the Republic of Poland/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 pl)
The daily reported that it had seen documents, signed by high-ranking finance ministry officials under the previous government, which it claimed said that Ex-Finance Minister Mateusz Szczurek "did not see grounds for legal changes that would enable an efficient fight against tax fraud".
Meanwhile, Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Poland's ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, accused the previous government of a "conscious passiveness" that allowed tax fraud.
"Such huge abuses [of the tax system] cannot happen without approval or at least passiveness, but a conscious passiveness of the government," Kaczyński said in an interview for public television broadcaster TVP.
"The scale [of tax fraud] was too great to think that it could have gone unnoticed," he added.
Kaczyński also denied a former deputy finance minister's claims that PiS's crackdown on tax fraud, launched after the party came to power in late 2015, was based on plans made by the former government.
The PiS government claimed in 2016 that tax cheats the year before caused budget losses estimated at over PLN 80 billion (EUR 18 billion, USD 21 billion). (vb)
Source: PAP