We have not used anything of the kind. No Pegasus, no services, no secretly obtained information of any kind played any role in the 2019 election campaign. They lost because they lost; they should not look for such excuses today

— Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński tells the „Sieci” weekly. We are publishing an excerpt from the extensive interview that will appear in Monday’s issue of the magazine.

SIECI WEEKLY: The opposition is heating up over a computer program called Pegasus, purchased by the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau. According to a Toronto-based organization, the program was used to conduct surveillance on PO senator Krzysztof Brejza, who was for a time the Platform’s chief of the 2019 campaign - although the organization itself admits it does not know who might have done it. So, what does the Prime Minister know about this matter?

PRIME MINISTER JAROSŁAW KACZYŃSKI:This is another case under the slogan „an affair made of nothing”. We must bring some order to this matter, although we should bear in mind that this is an area of state activity where secrecy rules apply, and I cannot comment in detail on the methods and techniques used in Poland - which are fully legal - or confirm such or other allegations. Pegasus is a programme used by services fighting crime and corruption in many countries. Its creation and use is the result of a technological change, the development of encrypted messengers, which cannot be read by the old monitoring systems.

It would be a bad thing if the Polish services did not have this type of tool. I think everyone will agree that various criminal groups should be under surveillance, that crime should be combated, and that surveillance tools are used for this purpose all over the world, obviously when there are legal grounds for doing so, and always under the control of courts and prosecutors. In Poland, the system for supervising such activities is one of the most rigorous in Europe.

The allegations of thousands of phones being checked are completely out of touch with reality. Their authors exploit the fact that those in a position to have real knowledge of the matter cannot say anything about it, as they are bound by professional secrecy. Therefore, I can only stress that the opposition’s narrative about Pegasus being used for political purposes is utter nonsense.

The fundamental question - and the accusation that is being made - is this: Was the knowledge gained from the Pegasus system used in the Law and Justice election campaign?

I am not bound by any secret here, and I can assure you that we did not have any such information during the course of our campaign, and we did not use anything of the kind. No Pegasus, no services, no secretly obtained information played any role in the 2019 election campaign. They lost because they lost; they should not look for such excuses today. All these stories by Mr Brejza are empty; nothing of the kind ever took place. I would like to point out that he himself appears in the Inowrocław case in a serious context; there are suspicions of serious crimes. It had nothing to do with the elections.

Is there a possibility of having a special commission of inquiry into this case or some other extraordinary action?

There is no reason for this, no reason at all. There is nothing here, no fact, except the hysteria of the opposition. There is no Pegasus case, there was no surveillance.

Why was the purchase of Pegasus financed from the Justice Fund?

This is a technical matter of no great importance. Public money was spent on an important public purpose, related to fighting crime and protecting citizens.

Tłum. K.J.