Media: Poland demands answers after wanted ex-minister travels to US

Poland has said it will seek explanations from both the United States and Hungary over how former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who faces abuse of power charges, was able to travel from Hungary to the United States, a Polish foreign ministry spokesperson said.

Warsaw’s request comes after its efforts to bring Ziobro back to Poland for trial were blocked. Ziobro and his former deputy Marcin Romanowski had been granted asylum in Hungary by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Reuters reports.

Poland had expected that following Orbán’s defeat in an April election by pro-EU rival Péter Magyar, the two officials would soon be returned to face proceedings in Warsaw. Both had previously been stripped of their passports, and Romanowski’s whereabouts remain unclear.

“We will ask both the United States and Hungary for the legal and factual basis on which Zbigniew Ziobro left Hungarian territory,” Polish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maciej Wewiór told Reuters.

“And specifically, what document allowed him to cross the border and gave him the right to enter the United States... We hope that this situation will be resolved and that it will not affect the very good relations between the United States and Poland.”

Neither the US embassy in Warsaw nor Hungary’s foreign ministry immediately responded to requests for comment.

Ziobro confirmed on May 10 that he is in the United States, telling private broadcaster TV Republika that he was already in the country. The station, which is aligned with the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party under which Ziobro served as minister, said he would work for it as a political commentator.

Ziobro, the architect of judicial reforms that the European Union said undermined judicial independence during the PiS government’s rule from 2015 to 2023, faces 26 charges, mainly related to alleged misuse of funds from a program intended to assist crime victims for political purposes.

By Vafa Guliyeva