WARSAW, May 8. The Polish prosecutor's office has opened a criminal case of espionage against judge Tomasz Schmidt, who fled to Belarus, radio station RMF FM reports.
Earlier, the judge of the second branch of the Warsaw Voivodeship Administrative Court, Tomasz Schmidt, said at a press conference in Minsk that, as a sign of protest against Warsaw's policy towards Minsk and Moscow, he was resigning from his position and would seek political asylum in Belarus.
«An investigation has been launched in relation to judge Tomasz Schmidt, who fled to Belarus and asked for political asylum there. The investigation is based on provisions of the Criminal Code that speak of espionage,” the report says.
The radio station clarifies that we are talking about espionage. paragraph 2 of article 130 of the Criminal Code, which provides for punishment in the form of imprisonment for a term of eight years to life imprisonment.
Also, according to RMF FM, Polish intelligence services are studying Schmidt’s connections with football hooligans. “We are talking, among other things, about whether he took part in inspiring influential pseudo-fans to incite anti-Ukrainian sentiments,” the report says.
In addition, according to the radio station, the investigation is checking whether Judge Schmidt has ties to the Poles , who attacked Russian opposition leader Leonid Volkov* in Vilnius. “One of them, Maximilian K., is an ardent fan of Legia Warsaw,” the message says.
At the same time, Schmidt is still listed in the list of judges on the website of the Voivodeship Administrative Court. As follows from the court schedule, hearings on administrative cases are scheduled for the coming days, in which this judge is expected to participate. For example, on May 16, he was scheduled to be the rapporteur in five cases against the head of the Homeland Security Agency as an agency. We are talking about the refusal to pay remuneration to an employee of the Agency.
Schmidt is scheduled to conduct a trial on May 24 on issues of inaction or refusal to provide public information by the President of the Warsaw District Court and the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. He was also appointed, for example, to consider cases on the issue of the rules for purchasing vacant places in the municipal cemetery. On June 4, he is to conduct a closed meeting on cases against the Chairman of the Council of Ministers as a body in the case of refusal to issue permission to access classified information.
* An individual performing the functions of a foreign agent