The scandal over the allocation of 600 million PLN from Poland’s National Recovery Plan revealed that former prime minister Beata Szydło’s husband, Edward Szydło, served as deputy chair of the committee awarding the funds.
GW: Mr. Szydło in the Committee Granting KPO Funds
According to the journal’s findings, Edward Szydło, husband of former prime minister Beata Szydło, served as deputy chair of the committee evaluating applications for grants from Poland’s National Recovery Plan. The committee decided to award nearly 600 million PLN to entrepreneurs from three voivodeships: Lesser Poland, Podkarpackie, and Świętokrzyskie. How did this happen? In 2023, when Poland was governed by the United Right, the Association for the Management and Trade School in Oświęcim applied to partner in the project financed by the KPO. Its deputy president is Edward Szydło. The Lesser Poland Agency for Regional Development in Kraków—responsible for accepting, evaluating, signing contracts, and monitoring implementation—selected the Association for the Management and Trade School in Oświęcim as its partner.
How the Process Unfolded?
Mariusz Bednarz, president of the Rzeszów Regional Development Agency, explained that “every application is first examined by two experts.” One evaluates it formally, the other from a substantive perspective. The number of points awarded in the substantive assessment determines the applicant’s ranking on the list, he said. The final list was approved by members of the Regional Project Evaluation Committee, of which Edward Szydło was one of the deputy chairs.
Government Meeting and MFiPR Head’s Clarifications
On Tuesday after 12 00 the government meeting began, during which ministers were to hear the clarifications from Minister of Finance and Regional Policy Katarzyna Pełczyńska‑Nałęcz. Earlier, she had repeatedly assured that responsibility for the distribution of KPO funds rests with the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development. By the end of July, from the chair position of the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PARP), Katarzyna Duber‑Stachurska was dismissed. Duber‑Stachurska posted on LinkedIn a note assigning responsibility for the KPO scandal to the Ministry of Finance and Regional Policy. “PARP is an execution agency, it does not make decisions on programs, it does not set the criteria for grant allocation. All procedures, regulations, and contracts are approved by the Ministry of Finance and Regional Policy; the agency has no independence in this area. And that was the case for KPO HoReCa,” she stressed. She added that the Ministry under Pełczyńska‑Nałęcz approved “even the way invoices were described with the expenses” and supervised daily program implementation. “The ministry knew about the boats— it answered operators’ questions about whether boats with combustion engines could be allowed. The minister assured entrepreneurs that she personally intervened to relax the original rules so that funds flowed more smoothly and faster,” Duber‑Stachurska wrote.
More on the KPO scandal can be found in the article “Afera KPO present for PiS, but Tusk gained the armory. Expert points out the main beneficiary.”
