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Hungary granted asylum to a former Polish deputy minister facing corruption charges citing “a lack of due process” in his case, a senior Hungarian official told a local news site on Thursday (19 December).
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff said the country gave refugee status to Polish lawmaker Marcin Romanowski “with accordance to Hungarian and EU law”, setting up a rare legal dispute between two EU member states.
“This is a political asylum, which can be granted if someone’s legal case is not guaranteed to be dealt with impartially and free from political influence in their home country beyond reasonable doubt,” Gergely Gulyas said according to pro-government weekly Mandiner’s online edition.
“This risk exists today in Poland in general and in particular in this individual case,” he added.
Gulyas referred to Romanowski’s earlier arrest, which was later deemed illegal by Polish courts because he had parliamentary immunity as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
Romanowski disappeared 11 days ago after PACE revoked his immunity and a court ordered his arrest.
His lawyer, Bartosz Lewandowski confirmed on the social platform X that he requested asylum in Hungary.
Orbán is a close ally of right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which was ousted from power by a pro-EU coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk following last year’s elections.
The nationalist leader accused Warsaw of using “the rule of law and the legal instruments to crack down on political opponents” in an interview with Mandiner published on Thursday, and vowed to offer asylum to anyone facing “political prosecution.”
Romanowski, a PiS lawmaker and former deputy justice minister from 2019 to 2023, is accused of 11 different offences by Polish prosecutors.
Charges against him include participation in an organised crime group and attempted embezzlement of funds totalling almost 40 million euros from a fund for crime victims, which he supervised.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called Budapest’s decision to grant asylum a “hostile act” in a post on X.
This is not the first time Hungary has provided shelter to Orbán’s foreign political allies facing prosecution.
In 2018, the central European country granted asylum to North Macedonia’s former prime minister Nikola Gruevski after he was sentenced to two years in jail for abuse of power.
This year, Brazil’s ex-president Jair Bolsonaro stayed at the Hungarian embassy in Brasilia for two days in mid-February, after police confiscated his passport and arrested two aides.
Days earlier investigators outlined their suspicions that Bolsonaro had fomented a “coup attempt” to prevent his 2022 election opponent and current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking power.
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The post Hungary grants asylum to Polish ex-official in corruption case appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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