'Amber Gold' commission to question Tusk
PR dla Zagranicy
Roberto Galea
23.10.2016 12:35
The commission set up to investigate the Amber Gold pyramid scheme plans to question former Prime Minister Donald Tusk about when he first learned of the company.
Amber Gold pretended to be a legitimate financial institution until its closure in 2012. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The head of the commission, Law and Justice (PiS) MP Małgorzata Wassermann, said on Saturday that the commission will be asking Tusk, now head of the European Council, when he first heard of the company and who was leading it.
Amber Gold had promised customers high returns on investments in gold, but the firm folded in August 2012, with thousands of Poles losing their savings.
The head of the company Marcin P. (name witheld under Polish privacy laws) had already been found guilty of crime by the time he opened the company.
Wassermann said: “It is a rare thing that a Prime Minister, first of all […] had no knowledge that such a financial pyramid was growing, and secondly, that his son started working in this pyramid,”.
Tusk's son was employed by a subsidiary of the company as a PR executive.
Marcin P. and his wife could each serve 15 years behind bars if found guilty of the various charges against them, which include money-laundering.
According to criminal records, 19,000 customers were swindled out of a combined sum of PLN 851 million (EUR 200 million) from 2009 to 2012.