Tomasz L., who was detained in the spring, was a member of the commission for the liquidation of the Military Information Services in 2006, which was overseen by then-deputy minister of national defence Antoni Macierewicz – one of the most influential people in the Law and Justice Party –, journalists at TVN24 discovered.
L., accused of espionage, was arrested and charged with spying for Russia shortly after that country’s invasion of Ukraine began. When Law and Justice ruled Poland between 2005 and 2007, he was also part of the liquidation committee of the military intelligence organisation, the Military Information Services, and he was supposed to have access to all their data.
The liquidation of the WSI occurred as a result of the reforms taking place in the country and the coalition arrangements of the then government. The organisation was replaced by two separate military intelligence and counterintelligence services.
According to information provided by the Polish services in March 2022, Tomasz L. was said to have copied and transferred operationally valuable data to the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. The man had access to the collections of the Archive of the Civil Status Office and the collections of the Central Archives of Historical Records and the State Archives of the City of Warsaw.
The author of the TVN24 report, Piotr Świerczek, revealed that documents of exceptional importance, intended only for the eyes of Polish officers, could have fallen into the hands of the spy.
However, it is not known whether L. was already a spy in 2006. “Tomasz L. had access to everything that the Military Information Service had accumulated in its resources,” Świerczek said.
As Onet.pl established, Tomasz L. was busted by the police because he met with one of the Russian diplomats, most likely observed by the Polish counterintelligence services.
The situation was addressed by Antoni Macierewicz himself, who posted an entry on Twitter: ‘I am informing you that I am taking legal action in connection with the publication in Gazeta Wyborcza of a slander based on false information that Tomasz L. suspected of spying for Russia was a member of the WSI Verification Commission.”
(Bartosz Sieniawski | EURACTIV.pl)
Source: euractiv.com
