Fugitive Polish minister flew to US from Italy, prosecutors say

Reuters reported this week, quoting three people familiar with the matter, that U.S. Deputy Secretary of State ​Christopher Landau instructed senior State Department officials to facilitate and ​approve a visa for Ziobro, allowing him to flee ⁠to the U.S. from Hungary.

"For several days now we have had official information ​that the suspect, Zbigniew Ziobro, left Europe on May 9 and ​flew from Milan... to New York by plane," state prosecution spokesman Przemyslaw Nowak told reporters.

The former minister travelled on a foreign media journalist visa, he added. ​Ziobro announced after arriving in the U.S. that he would ​be a correspondent for a right-wing Polish TV station.

His lawyer, Bartosz Lewandowski, earlier ‌confirmed ⁠Ziobro had received a "Geneva passport" - a document that allows refugees to travel - issued by Hungary after obtaining asylum in that country under its previous nationalist government.

"My client would like to emphasize that at the ​time of his ​departure, he ⁠was not an internationally wanted person and was not prohibited from travelling to the U.S.," Lewandowski said ​in a statement emailed to Reuters.

Ziobro, who served ​in ⁠the nationalist Law and Justice government which lost power in 2023, faces 26 charges, mainly relating to misuse of money from a fund intended ⁠to ​help victims of crime for political gain.

​He denies wrongdoing and says he is the victim of a politically motivated campaign ​by Poland's ruling pro-European Union coalition.