Poland’s ex-oil boss moves to Brussels, beyond the reach of prosecutors

Daniel Obajtek is in hiding. He didn’t show up to testify in Poland. Last time anyone saw him, he was holed up in a luxury apartment in Budapest. 

Now he’s coming to Brussels.

The European Parliament will soon inherit the elusive former CEO of Poland’s largest oil company, Orlen, which is facing mounting investigations over its conduct during Obajtek’s six-year reign. The ex-chief denies wrongdoing but observers say charges could be filed imminently.

In Brussels, however, that won’t matter. As a newly elected Parliament member, he now enjoys immunity from prosecution.

“Being a member of the European Parliament is very good news for Obajtek because he has now immunity from the moment he was elected,” said Robert Tomaszewski, a senior energy analyst at the Warsaw-based Polytika Insight think tank. “This is for sure, his top priority.”

The ex-Orlen boss was fired by Prime Minister Donald Tusk during a wider purge of high-profile officials linked to the previous nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government.

Now Obajtek is on a collision course with his new colleagues. His case is an instant rule-of-law test for the incoming Parliament and may set a precedent for how seriously the new crop of lawmakers take the issue as they take their seats in Strasbourg next month following the EU election.

“It’s an attempt to ensure immunity, which in my opinion, will only be short-lived because we’re going to do our best to have Obajtek’s immunity lifted,” said Michał Szczerba, a newly elected MEP for Tusk’s Civic Coalition, who also chairs a Polish parliamentary committee that summoned the ex-boss to testify several times.

Energy enmity

While Obajtek himself has not been charged with any crime, the powerful state-owned Orlen is currently facing five separate probes relating to his tenure.

The former oil chief argues the cases are part of a political witch hunt.

“Over the past years, I have been building with my team a multi-energy Orlen that guards the energy security of Poland,” Obajtek told POLITICO from an undisclosed location. “Now the current authorities in Poland want to destroy me for this because I acted for the good of the country.”

Among the cases prosecutors are investigating is a botched energy deal that lost Orlen €370 million. The deal was carried out by a Swiss subsidiary of the firm whose former CEO had suspected ties to the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, despite warnings from Orlen’s own internal security services.

The probes also include artificially lowering fuel prices ahead of last year’s parliamentary elections, and selling assets to Saudi energy giant Aramco for €1 billion less than they were worth.

Obajtek has also refused three times to appear at a parliamentary hearing related to Poland’s cash-for-visas scandal despite requests from Szczerba’s investigative committee.

The freshly elected MEP said he had “nothing to do” with the scandal, under which former PiS officials were accused of fast-tracking visa applications for migrants in return for money.

“After the [EU election] campaign, its chairman [Szczerba] stated that he would no longer call me as a witness. How can you not call this nothing more than a political stunt?” he added.

Technically, the European Parliament can only lift an MEP’s immunity once charges have been filed and they receive a request from national authorities to strip their legal protections.

But given Obajtek “was the person who was responsible for [signing off on] all those decisions,” said Tomaszewski, the chances of him facing charges “in the coming weeks or months” is “100 percent.” 

Shifting priorities

The former CEO’s arrival in Brussels also offers a litmus test for how the incoming European Parliament will deal with the rule of law.

During the last five years, the issue has been among the institution’s top priorities as MEPs lobbied hard for EU action against Hungary over concerns around corruption. It also set up a new ethics watchdog after facing a sweeping cash-for-influence scandal, dubbed Qatargate.

Obajtek isn’t the only new MEP coming to Brussels with baggage.

Maximilian Krah and Peter Bystron, who topped the far-right Alternative for Germany party list, are similarly facing investigations for suspected bribery and money laundering. Italian leftwinger Ilaria Salis, who has spent 15 months in detention in Hungary after being accused of assaulting far-right demonstrators, will now also be released under Parliamentary immunity.

There’s plenty of precedent on MEPs lifting lawmakers’ legal immunity, even within Law and Justice. Last year, PiS MEPs Beata Mazurek and Tomasz Poręba were stripped of their legal protections after being accused of inciting hatred against refugees.

“The European Parliament did lift the immunity of some PiS MEPs in the previous term and Obajtek won’t be a sacred cow here and I think decisions in his case will be made effectively and fast,” said Szczerba.

Still, the surge of rightwing and far-right parties in the recent EU election is raising questions about how seriously the Parliament will now take those concerns. 

Indeed, the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists and Identity and Democracy groups are on track to have almost as many MEPs as the second-largest group, the center-left Socialists and Democrats.

“Given the shift to the right, I fear that … the priority of rule of law, of ethics, of transparency, might slip down the political agenda,” said Greens MEP Daniel Freund, a lawmaker on the Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee and a vocal advocate of assertive rule-of-law action.

“Parliamentary immunity is here to protect us in our political work,” Freund said, “it is not a shield from being held accountable.”

“An election is not a washing machine.”