Ryszard Czarnecki, a former vice president of the European Parliament, really liked to travel to work — so much so that he used cars, scooters, a motorbike and even a semi-trailer truck  to travel between Poland and the legislature.

At least that’s what was claimed in the €203,000 in expenses he filed to the European Parliament.

He was first investigated by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) in 2020, which questioned €100,000 reimbursed to him for travel between 2009 and 2018. He returned that money to the Parliament, ending the European case, but the file was passed on to Polish prosecutors, who have not proven as understanding as their EU counterparts.

His defeat in this year’s European election also made it easier to charge him as he is no longer covered by parliamentary immunity.

Czarnecki, who was an MEP from 2004 to 2024 and served as one of the Parliament’s vice presidents, now faces up to 15 years in prison on fraud charges.

“Repayment does not settle the matter; at most, it can have an impact on the penalty or on a possible obligation to make restitution,” Rafał Kawalec, spokesperson for the regional prosecutor’s office in the eastern city of Zamość, told the Rzeczpospolita newspaper last month.

Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper got a look at the prosecution files and on Monday wrote up the details of the allegations facing Czarnecki.

According to the report, Czarnecki filed 243 travel claims for cross-continent trips in 14 different cars, as well as on Chinese-made scooters, a 750cc Suzuki sports motorcycle, and even a heavy-duty truck.

Some of the cars appeared to have made-up license plate numbers, while others were registered to people who said they had never met Czarnecki.

Many of the trips were from the eastern Polish town of Jasło, where Czarnecki said he lived, although in reality he has lived for years in Warsaw — which is 340 kilometers closer to Brussels.

Czarnecki insists none of it is his fault, blaming staff who filled out the expense forms and calling the claims “lies and complete nonsense.”

“Once again, as I have emphasized over the past four years, I did not fill out the travel reimbursement forms that the prosecution—and consequently the media—are referring to,” he told POLITICO. “I did not input the data in question. I have repeatedly stressed this. It is ill-willed not to acknowledge it.”

Czarnecki was an MEP for various parties, but in his final three terms had jumped to the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which ruled Poland from 2015 until last year.

The new government of PM Donald Tusk is pressing for PiS politicians to face prosecution for corruption and other misdeeds, and has mentioned Czarnecki as one of the cases that needs to be resolved.

Tusk is gearing up for next year’s presidential election to replace PiS-allied incumbent Andrzej Duda, and corruption allegations could harm Law and Justice.

Czarnecki says he’s being unfairly singled out.

“I returned all the funds requested by the European Parliament three years ago,” Czarnecki said. “I consider the entire case to be political.”

A very political case

The new Tusk government and its supporters are seizing on Czarnecki as an example of what was allowed under the previous PiS administration, when prosecutors were closely controlled by the government and did not pursue many politically sensitive cases.

“This fraud should be accounted for and severely punished,” Monika Wielichowska, the deputy speaker of parliament and a member of Tusk’s Civic Coalition party, told Polish media, adding that if the reports are true, then Czarnecki’s behavior was “a brazen scam.”

Even Czarnecki’s former PiS allies are being careful.

Jarosław Kaczyński, the party chair, said: “When the relevant verdicts are reached, of course, then we will have to make appropriate conclusions.”

For Czarnecki, it’s not his first tangle with infamy.

In 2018 he became the first European Parliament vice president to be dismissed from his post after he likened fellow Polish MEP Róża Thun to a Nazi collaborator.

Czarnecki’s political connections also landed him other public jobs, notably in Polish sport, where he held high positions in the Polish Football Association, the Polish Volleyball Association, and in the Polish Olympic Committee.

As the deputy head of the Polish Volleyball Association, he first said he was doing the job on a voluntary basis, but Poland’s TVN television later discovered he was being paid. Czarnecki responded he had been pressured to take the cash.

Having an unpaid vice president created an “awkward, artificial situation and I was persuaded not to do it,” he told TVN last year.

Now 63, Czarnecki is a political survivor, having jumped from party to party and job to job over past decades, and always coming out on top. He insists this time will be no different.

“During the court proceedings, I will prove my innocence,” he said.

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