Civic Platform-Civic Coalition (PO-KO) MPs said on Tuesday that they'd come across information that chairman of the Supreme Audit Office (NIK) Marian Banaś is said to have tendered his resignation at the desk of Sejm Marshal Elżbieta Witek. The latter, however, said during the lower house session that "no letter regarding Mr Banaś' resignation has been filed".
In the TV report by "Superwizjer" TVN aired on September 21, Bertold Kittel focused on a tenement building standing in the Kraków district of Podgórze, which the chairman of the Supreme Audit Office, Marian Banaś, listed in his asset declarations. The journalist discovered a hotel there which rents rooms by the hour, and came across a criminal with a binding court sentence.
Banaś' resignation on the desk
"We've come across information that chairman Marian Banaś' resignation landed on the Marshal's (Witek) desk. The information comes from a reliable source," Sławomir Nitras from PO-KO said at a conference in the Sejm on Tuesday.
"We're afraid that we just discovered the real reason why the parliament session has been extended," he added.
Nitras also said that "this explains why this Sejm and Senate have been summoned after the election". "We're worried that there may be attempts to appoint the new chief of NIK by the parliament of the ending term. If this turned out to be true, this would be a blatant violation of the law," he stressed.
On Tuesday, the Sejm of the ending VIII term convened to resume the session suspended in September. On Sunday (October 13), Poles had chosen MPS for the IX term.
Witek: no resignation filed
Nitras picked up the issue in the Plenary Hall. He asked Marshal Witek if Banaś' resignation was actually filed at her desk. "No letter regarding Mr Banaś' resignation has been filed. I'd like to deny this. I know nothing about such thing. I just left my office and there was nothing of that sort. I think that someone has spread fake news," she replied.
She added that she would keep her word and there would be no changes in the Sejm session agenda.
Deputy Marshal of the Sejm and the head of Law and Justice parliamentary club, Ryszard Terlecki, told journalists in the Sejm that the information regarding Banaś' resignation was just gossip.
Assets under scrutiny
The Central Anti-Corruption Bureau has been looking into Marian Banaś' asset declaration since April 16. The investigation includes documents filed between 2015 and 2019, when Banaś was deputy minister and minister of finance, and chairman of the Supreme Audit Office (NIK).
Due to concerns regarding his asset declarations, on September 27, Banaś took an unpaid holiday.
Autor: gf / Źródło: TVN24 News in English