Polish politics. Another week, another scandal

A new and murky tale of intrigue in Poland

POLAND has only just got over one big political scandal, triggered when a well-known film producer called Lew Rywin allegedly offered to get a media-ownership law amended in exchange for a large payment to his friends in power. A parliamentary inquiry helped to bring down the government of the day, led by Leszek Miller, who resigned as prime minister in May.

Now another parliamentary commission is digging into an even juicier-sounding tale. This one mixes oil, a Russian spy and another multi-million dollar bribe. Much is still hearsay, but the story goes that Poland's richest businessman, Jan Kulczyk, a private investor in a partly state-owned oil company, PKN Orlen, had a meeting in Vienna last year with a reputed Russian spy named Vladimir Alganov. At the meeting, Mr Alganov said a Russian oil company had paid a $5m bribe to a Polish minister and a Polish industrialist (not Mr Kulczyk) to ensure that the Russians would win the tender for a soon-to-be-privatised Polish oil refinery. The bribe was taken, according to Mr Alganov, but the refinery was still not sold - and the Russians were getting upset.

Opposition parties want to steer this affair in the direction of Aleksander Kwasniewski, Poland's Socialist president, by linking him to Mr Kulczyk. The inquiry is said to hold a note from a Polish intelligence officer who spoke to associates of Mr Alganov after his meeting with Mr Kulczyk. According to this note, Mr Alganov said that Mr Kulczyk portrayed himself as able to lobby Mr Kwasniewski and get the Russians their deal.

Mr Alganov, a presumed KGB agent in Warsaw from 1981 to 1992, featured in another political scandal a few years later. He now works for the Russian electricity monopoly, UES. Mr Kulczyk admitted last week that he had met Mr Alganov, but claimed the meeting had been set up with UES and that he did not know Mr Alganov would be present. He denied offering to intervene with Mr Kwasniewski over the oil-refinery privatisation, calling the idea “laughable”.

The scandal may yet prove a Russian invention. If so, it has not been thought through, since one effect of it will be to make the Poles even warier of Russian attempts to invest in their oil industry. Mr Kwasniewski could also be hurt if any mud sticks to him, however unfairly. His presidency ends next year. He has long been seen as the only man who might revive the Socialist Party, after its near collapse under Mr Miller (the current Socialist prime minister, Marek Belka, is more of a caretaker for the party). But for that, Mr Kwasniewski would need to return to politics with his moral authority intact. His opponents hope to deny him that chance.