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By EU Reporter Special Correspondent

The Polish government has been urged by Brussels to clean up its preventive detention laws, which MEPs were told are used to shut down businesses in a way that does not happen in other EU member states.           

At the launch of a new Polish pro-business foundation, German and Polish lawyers expressed concern at the use by Polish state prosecutors of communist-era laws which are used against entrepeneurs.           

The author John Borrell presented his book The White Lake, which describes in detail how Polish prosecutors combine with police, local politicians and editors to try and force rivals out of business. Borrell, a former senior foreign correspondent for Thời gian magazine from New Zealand, set up a hotel and wine importing business in north-east Poland and had to struggle to overcome successive attempts by the local Uklad (cabal).           

The news conference was told these practices were "the dark side of the Polish economic success story" by the UK’s former Europe minister, Dr Denis MacShane, who is an expert on Poland. Polish MEPs will be asked to take up the growing concern about the use of preventive detentions of business executives which result in firms shutting down and Polish workers having to emigrate to find jobs.           

According to Berlin senior lawyer Andreas Zumschlinge, disputes between the authorities and Polish businesses about tax or social security contributions which in other EU countries are dealt with under commercial or administrative law, in Poland are treated as major crimes. This allows Polish prosecutors to detain executives, sometimes for months, with ever being required to produce evidence about alleged wrongdoing or lay charges. But with the executives removed from running their firms, the business usually shuts down to the profit or rival businessmen.           

Warsaw lawyer Marcin Kondracki said that one of the worst aspects of the use by prosecutors of preventive detention is that they refuse communicate with lawyers or explain what the reasons are for the detentions.

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The Kmetko Foundation, which had its launch event at the Brussels Press Club, has been set up by Wroclaw businessman Marek Kmetko, who has experienced first-hand the attacks on business described by the lawyers and John Borrell. Kmetko’s employment agency firm which operates out of Berlin with contracts providing jobs for thousands of workers in Wroclaw and other Polish cities has been put out of business after its local executives were detained and imprisoned for several months in November 2013.           

The allegation is that Kmetko has not paid social insurance contributions but as his lawyer stated in Brussels, the Polish businessman has written offering to pay any outstanding moneys owed.           

His letter was received by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s office in Warsaw and was sent to Wroclaw to be dealt with by the relevant authorities there. So far, the Wroclaw prosecutor and social insurance offices have not replied but instead have tried to put extra pressure on Mr Kmetko.  They have done so by detaining a woman employee of his German and Swiss based companies, Dagmara Natkaniec.           

She was visiting family in Wroclaw at the time of  the arrests and was also swept up the Polish police and held in prison for several months. Her 14-year-old daughter, Sandra, told the news conference how was was interrogated by the Polish police without being allowed to have a relative or lawyer present.  A male police officer took her away for questioning trying to find out details about her mother. "I was very frightened.  I want my mummy back," said the little girl.  Sandra lives and goes to school in Berlin but the Wroclaw prosecutor’s office is insisting that her mother stays in Wroclaw and so she cannot be with her daughter. 

Kmetko has been investigated by the German police and state prosecutor’s office after his enemies in Wroclaw sent allegations to Berlin accusing him of money laundering. This was based on the transfer of money earned in Poland in Zlotys into euros in Kmetko’s bank accounts in Berlin where his main business is legally registered. The German police found nothing to reproach Kmetko for, his Berlin lawyer Andreas Zumchlinge told the audience in Brussels. "A lot of what has happened to Kmetko could not happen in Germany or other democratic EU member states," he added.           

Polish MEPs will now be asked to investigate the use of preventive detention against businesses in Poland. Transparency International and the European Court of Human Rights have already expressed concern about the use of preventive detention as an anti-business measure.

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