Why Does a Dead Man Make the Polish Nomenklatura Shiver?

Third Falzmann-Symposium on the Tenth Anniversary of Michael Falzmann (1953-1991) from July 6-8 in Nysa, Poland

Professor Jerzy Przystawa, Wroclaw

Can this explosive symposium go by without a huge shake-up of the entire establishment?

For the third time, the Polish Citizens' Movement is holding a memorial symposium in honour of Michael Falzmann, who died suddenly in suspicious circumstances in 1991. Falzmann was an ordinary accountant in what at that time was the principal Polish committee for the control of public finance, the NIK. During his routine investigations, Falzmann came across an enormous financial scandal, clearly involving high-level functionaries, economic and political leaders, and even Church dignitaries. The financial machinations were carried out by a semi-official committee the so-called FOZZ (Fundusz Obslugi Zadluzenia Zagranicznego, the Foundation for the Administration of Polish Foreign Debts, which in 1994 amounted to 50 billion dollars). During the period investigated (which went back to the time of the communist regime), the sum of half a billion US dollars went missing. It was obvious that the preferred modus operandi of the criminal syndicate covered up by the FOZZ was to royally reward itself for fictional, illegal activities against the black market 'in Poland's service.' The middlemen (there were also women involved) pretended to buy back Polish promissory notes from the black market under conditions favourable for Poland. These illegal machinations (wich therefore never showed up in the accounts) apparently in Poland's interests, were royally rewarded by FOZZ. Certainly the allegedly re-purchased promissory notes never found their way to the treasury of the Polish National Bank. For years, Polish capital taxation was systematically exploited. Falzmann prepared a dossier of 180 files with the evidence on the FOZZ affair for the public prosecutor dealing with the investigation. But immediately afterwards, in July 1991, he died of a heart attack at 38 years of age. The president of the investigatory commission, NIT, Professor Walerian Panko, also died suddenly, a day before he was to make his report to the relevant parliamentary committee. Up to now, despite overwhelming proof, none of those responsible, clearly indicated by Falzmann, have been brought to justice.

Jerzy Przystawa, the editor and co-author of the book which exposed this scandal, proves that the FOZZ-scandal is only the tip of the iceberg. Similar foreign currency frauds of the highest amounts (using insider information on the government's fiscal politics and on the politics of fixed dollar exchange rates) would amount to the theft of several billion dollars from Polish national assets (Miroslav Dakowski and Jerzy Przystawa, Via Bank i FOZZ. O rabunka finansow Polski—Via Bank and FOZZ: On the Plundering of Polish Finances).