“Zbigniew Ziobro Amnesty”. Why Piotr Kaszubski can avoid many years of imprisonment
After a decade of investigations, the Prosecutor General’s Office sent a second indictment against Piotr Kaszubski, who is reputed to be “the youngest Polish millionaire”. This time, he’s accusing him of cheating 180,000 customers who bought, among other things, his “miracle” toothpaste and weight-loss remedies. And although Kashubsky theoretically faces up to 15 years in prison, it will not be easy to send him to prison for many years. This is the result of decisions of the Austrian courts that decided that in Poland he could not rely on a completely fair trial.
A few prosecutors and countless policemen from the Operations and Investigations departments dealt with the “youngest Polish millionaire” for nearly a decade.
His interests were first examined by the Public Prosecutor’s Offices, then the investigations were “promoted” to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and finally to the Warsaw Regional Prosecutor’s Office.
The court joins the cases
At the end of last year, the first trial of Pyotr Kaszubsky in the Warsaw-Mokotov District Court was scheduled to begin. (Agrees to publish the name). The files for this case consist of 50 volumes with evidence proving – according to the Prosecutor’s Office – that the man committed, among other things, crimes from the Financial Penal Code. As a result, he was supposed to “reduce the tax payable in excess of three million zlotys”, for which he was threatened with imprisonment for up to ten years. In the end, it was not possible to start this trial because the court decided to examine the health of the accused.
Meanwhile, the attorney general’s office announced that another indictment had been sent to court. This time not to the district court, but to the district court in Warsaw. At the same time, the Prosecutor General’s Office requested the inclusion of the two indictments. – Trial [w pierwszej ze spraw – red.] not start. We want the two indictments to be considered together. The maneuver will allow for one trial, instead of two – Prosecutor Marcin Sado, a spokesman for the Warsaw Regional Prosecutor’s Office, explained to us. This is what happened. On May 31, the investigators’ request was granted and the District Court in Warsaw will hear the two cases in one trial.
The combination of cases must be appropriate for the court, the accused himself, and consistent with what lawyers call “procedural economics.”
The second indictment is more “species-specific” than the previous one, which focused on tax exhaustion. This time, prosecutors charged Piotr Kaszubski with 14 offenses under the Penal Code, including defrauding 180,000 clients and extorting nearly 31 million PLN from them.
Misleading customers about the characteristics and efficacy of the products sold, and the possibility of returning the products and getting their money back. In the case of most of the products, the defendants attributed the medicinal products’ properties to it, even though it did not meet the requirements set out in the Pharmaceuticals Act, says company spokesperson Marcin Sado.
Other allegations include extortion of tens of thousands of zlotys, so-called money laundering of 10 million PLN, document falsification or trademark falsification. The maximum sentence Kashubian faces – at least in theory – up to 15 years in prison.
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Despite the very serious allegations and the large total amount of losses, the prosecutor’s office will find it difficult to persuade the court to sentence Kashubsky to many years in prison. And if the court agrees with the position of the accused’s defender, it may turn out that Pyotr Kaszupsky will not be responsible at all for the actions accused by the prosecution.
why? To understand this, one has to go back to the end of 2015, when the prosecutor’s office and the police were ready to charge Peter Kaszubsky with fraud. Then the man managed to flee the country. Police in the capital were only able to track him down a year later, on Christmas Eve 2016. Austrian policemen cut the handcuffs on his hands. A few months earlier, a European Kashubian arrest warrant (EAW) was issued on the basis of which – with the approval of the Austrian judiciary – he was brought to Poland.
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