Historian, amateur boxer, and supporter of US President Donald Trump, Karol Nawrocki, will be inaugurated as Poland’s president on the 6th of August, but in the meantime, rumors about his possibly shady past continue to swirl, writes Politico.
While the presidency will grant the nationalist politician immunity, it has not dampened the buzz of surreal scandals that erupted in the run-up to Poland’s presidential election. Nawrocki won the election with 50.98% of the vote. The controversial stories range from the bizarre use of a crime writer’s alter ego to promote himself to more serious allegations of criminal connections and pimping.
Former Polish president, Nobel laureate and dissident Lech Wałęsa, who led the movement that overthrew communism, has said he will not attend Nawrocki’s inauguration.
Polish prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the alleged fraud of an elderly man, identified in the case as Jerzy Ż., between 2012 and 2017 to obtain his apartment in Gdansk. Prosecutors have not named Nawrocki as a suspect in the case, but the investigation is looking into the circumstances under which the future president acquired the property.
The investigation into the apartment was launched after three official complaints,
one of which was filed by Gdansk mayor Aleksandra Dulkiewicz, a member of the liberal and pro-European Civic Coalition party. The criminal case centers on whether Jerzy was defrauded when he gave up his apartment. Fraud of this magnitude can lead to imprisonment for a term ranging from six months to eight years, but Nawrocki is not currently facing such a threat. As head of state, he is only responsible to the State Tribunal, which means that Nawrocki is outside the reach of ordinary courts for at least five years. After that, a politician can be tried unless he is re-elected for another term.
The newly elected president emphasizes that he did nothing reprehensible and acted with the best of intentions. In an interview with Wirtualna Polska, Nawrocki said that countless witnesses can confirm that he provided assistance, financial support and household assistance to Jerzy.
However, the matter is further complicated by information obtained by the Gazeta Wyborcza that Jerzy was imprisoned for a sex crime in 2011, just before the period examined in the criminal case.
However, the most severe accusation used against Nawrocki is that the newly elected president was involved in pimping at the seaside hotel Sopot. Nawrocki vehemently denies this accusation. Before the elections, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk accused the conservative right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) of knowing about
Nawrocki’s connections with bandits, the arranging of girls, real estate fraud
and other crimes still unknown to the public. Information about the alleged pimping first came to light in May, when the media outlet Onet reported that Nawrocki had arranged prostitute services for everyone at the hotel where he worked as a security guard, then received a portion of the women’s earnings.
Nawrocki has filed a lawsuit against Onet over the publication. However, critics point out that it is significant that the politician did not do so in an expedited manner, which in the electoral regime would mean that a case involving insults made during the pre-election campaign would be considered within 48 hours. Instead, the case can now drag on for months, if not years. When asked by Wirtualna Polska whether the accusations of pimping were false, Nawrocki replied that they absolutely were, and that he had been slandered.
Nawrocki, however, admitted that in 2009 he participated in a brawl between football hooligans from Poznań and Gdańsk. At the time, the politician had just started working at the Polish National Institute of Remembrance, which studies the crimes of the Nazi and communist regimes against Poles. The fight, which the passionate amateur boxer Nawrocki called sparring, was investigated at the time, and it was reported that some of the participants had a serious criminal past. The newly elected president indicated during the pre-election campaign that he had only participated in sporting, noble fights. He emphasized that when he boxed with someone (and the fighting partner was always willingly involved), he did not conduct checks or ask for a certificate of non-criminality, and therefore it is quite possible that he met in the ring with someone who had previously done bad things. However, this did not affect him in any way. Now,
Nawrocki has admitted that he had crossed the line, calling all the fights “noble.”
There is also talk that Nawrocki abused his official position. He headed the World War II Museum in Gdańsk from 2017 to 2021, and during this time he allegedly used the museum’s luxurious apartment without paying anything for it. Information about this situation first appeared in the Gazeta Wyborcza in early 2025, and the prosecutor’s office launched an investigation, which is still ongoing. According to the newspaper’s calculations, the museum would have earned 28,000 euros for renting out the apartments for half a year. Nawrocki denies using the apartments for private purposes. He allegedly stayed there during the pandemic to isolate himself, as well as to receive official guests.
Another investigation related to the museum does not directly concern Nawrocki, but is examining events that took place while he was the museum’s director. Between April and June 2020, 8,000 historical albums disappeared from the museum’s collection. The current museum management believes that the albums were destroyed, causing damage worth almost 50,000 euros.
Another case involving the future president is more bizarre than criminal. During the election campaign, an interview recorded by the Gdańsk branch of TVP in 2018 was found. In it, the writer Tadeusz Batyr, who studied the Polish underground in the 1990s, praised a book written by Nawrocki. The catch is that it later turned out that the writer was Nawrocki himself. During the interview, his face was blurred and his voice changed to protect him from possible revenge by bandits. Nawrocki defended himself, pointing out that pseudonyms are nothing new in Polish literature, journalism, and research.
Read also: Eurosceptic Nawrocki wins Polish presidential election, election commission says