Scooters, bikes, cars and trucks: Polish ex-MEP faces charges over fraudulent travel claims

For Czarnecki, it’s not his first tangle with infamy.

In 2018 he became the first European Parliament vice president to be dismissed from his post after he likened fellow Polish MEP Róża Thun to a Nazi collaborator.

Czarnecki’s political connections also landed him other public jobs, notably in Polish sport, where he held high positions in the Polish Football Association, the Polish Volleyball Association, and in the Polish Olympic Committee.

As the deputy head of the Polish Volleyball Association, he first said he was doing the job on a voluntary basis, but Poland’s TVN television later discovered he was being paid. Czarnecki responded he had been pressured to take the cash.

Having an unpaid vice president created an “awkward, artificial situation and I was persuaded not to do it,” he told TVN last year.

Now 63, Czarnecki is a political survivor, having jumped from party to party and job to job over past decades, and always coming out on top. He insists this time will be no different.

“During the court proceedings, I will prove my innocence,” he said.