Prosecutors have charged five people, including Waclaw Niewiarowski, industry minister in Hanna Suchocka's cabinet in 1992-93, with exceeding their authority and harming the public interest in a deal involving the construction of the Yamal-Europe natural gas pipeline and the accompanying fibre-optic cable. In particular, Niewiarowski is accused of depriving Poland of control over the pipeline project by letting a private contractor, the Gaz Trading Company, take a stake in it.

According to an inter-governmental agreement, Poland's PGNiG and Russia's Gazprom were to each hold 50% of the shares in the Polish-Russian company EuRoPol, which built the pipeline. Prosecutors charge that Niewiarowski's activities allowed Gaz Trading to take a 4% stake in EuRoPol, while PGNiG and Gazprom were each left with 48%.

(NewsBase 24.vi.02)