Ex-finance minister questioned in Polish tax probe
PR dla Zagranicy
Grzegorz Siwicki
10.12.2018 10:30
A panel of Polish MPs was on Monday questioning a former finance minister as a witness in an ongoing probe into suspected cases of VAT and excise tax fraud under the country’s previous government.
Former Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski questioned in the tax fraud probe on Monday. Photo: PAP/Paweł Supernak
The witness, Jacek Rostowski, was once finance minister in the government of Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister who is now a top European Union official.
The inquiry, led by Marcin Horała, an MP for Poland’s ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, got under way after the lower house of Poland's parliament in early July voted to launch a parliamentary investigation into suspected irregularities.
Horała said at the time that a probe was needed to check former finance ministry officials and others who oversaw the VAT collection system under the Civic Platform-led government, which governed Poland from 2007 to 2015.
Rostowski worked under Tusk as finance minister as well as deputy prime minister from 2007 to 2013.
The special parliamentary commission’s first witness, Witold Modzelewski, one of the architects of Poland’s value-added tax system and deputy finance minister from 1992 to 1996, told the investigators in September 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.
(gs/pk)
Source: TVP Info, IAR