Polish prosecutors are investigating how a former justice minister wanted on multiple criminal charges managed to flee to the US from Hungary, where the former prime minister Viktor Orbán had granted him political asylum.
On Saturday, as the inauguration of Péter Magyar as Hungary’s new prime minister marked the end of Orbán’s 16 years in power, reports emerged that Poland’s Zbigniew Ziobro had left the central European country and was in the US.
Ziobro, who last year was stripped of his Polish and diplomatic passports, confirmed the reports on Sunday. “I am in the United States,” Ziobro told the rightwing Polish broadcaster Republika, saying he had arrived in the “strongest democracy in the world” a day earlier.
Last month Magyar said that Hungary would no longer harbour Ziobro – a key figure in the government led by the nationalist conservative Law and Justice party that ran Poland between 2015 and 2023 – leading many to assume that Poland would be able to put him on trial.
The former minister faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted of allegations of abuse of power. Prosecutors have accused him of creating and leading a criminal group that diverted funds from victims of violence to use for his own interests, including to buy Israeli Pegasus spyware to allegedly monitor political opponents.
Ziobro has denied the charges, describing them as fabricated and accusing the centrist Polish government, led by Donald Tusk, of carrying out a “personal vendetta” against him.
On Monday, Polish prosecutors said they were looking into how Ziobro had managed to travel to the US despite having his Polish and diplomatic passports revoked.
“Zbigniew Ziobro has not had a passport for many months, so one thing is certain: [he] certainly did not enter the United States under general rules,” Przemysław Nowak, a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office, told reporters on Monday. “Everything suggests the suspect, Zbigniew Ziobro, has chosen to continue evading the Polish justice system.”
If it is confirmed that Ziobro is seeking to settle in the US, Poland would request his extradition, Nowak added, noting that most extraditions were complex procedures that could take years.
Poland’s foreign ministry said it would seek answers internationally. “We will ask both the United States and Hungary for the legal and factual basis on which Zbigniew Ziobro left Hungarian territory,” a spokesperson told Reuters.
“And specifically, what document allowed him to cross the border and gave him the right to enter the United States … We hope that this situation will be resolved and that it will not affect the very good relations between the United States and Poland.”
Ziobro told Republika that he had entered the US using the asylum documents provided to him by Hungary. “These are well-known procedures associated with granting a citizen the right of asylum, [when] one also uses appropriate documents that allow them to move around the world,” he said.
The Polish news site Onet reported that Ziobro had received a US journalist visa linked to Republika. The broadcaster, long aligned with the Polish right, later said it had hired the ex-justice minister as its political commentator in the US.
Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported that the US president, Donald Trump, was personally involved in securing Ziobro a visa, overriding objections from the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the US ambassador in Warsaw, Tom Rose.
Rose had recently reassured Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, that the US would not provide shelter to Ziobro, the newspaper added. On Monday, the US state department did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The questions regarding Ziobro’s travel come weeks after Magyar said that Hungary would no longer shelter people wanted elsewhere.
“Hungary will no longer be a dumping ground for internationally wanted criminals,” he said after his landslide victory, citing Ziobro and his former deputy, Marcin Romanowski, by name.
The whereabouts of Romanowski are unclear. Polish officials have accused him of corruption and abusing funds meant to help victims of crime. He denies any wrongdoing.
The current Polish justice minister, Waldemar Zurek, said Poland had for months been taking “every possible step” to ensure that Ziobro was brought to justice. “We will not cease our efforts to ensure that he and Mr Marcin Romanowski are held accountable before the Polish justice system,” he said on social media.
Ziobro was the leader of the ultra-conservative Sovereign Poland party, a junior coalition partner of the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party. He is known as an architect of contentious judicial reforms, which sparked a standoff between Poland and the European Commission.
When asked by Republika about his potential extradition, Ziobro replied: “I am ready to appear before any court, and an American independent court is certainly an independent court.”
He said he was not afraid of the court. “If they want to initiate extradition proceedings, by all means,” he added, describing extradition cases in US courts “a demanding procedure”.
