Polish presidential candidate in trouble over apartment deal

WARSAW — Presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki is finding it’s politically dangerous to get tangled up in Poland’s red-hot property market.

Nawrocki, backed by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, is under fire over allegations that he didn’t come clean about how many apartments he owns, and that he may have acquired one in return for taking care of a disabled pensioner — who was later found to be living in a retirement home.

After days of negative coverage, Nawrocki held a news conference Wednesday where he insisted he had bought the apartment legally but that he and his wife would donate it to charity. However, his campaign, which had been gaining momentum in recent weeks, is now in serious disarray.

The real estate fuss is yet another blow to the historian, whose credibility has already been battered by reports of his bizarre effort to promote his book on organized crime in a TV interview with an expert who turned out to be Nawrocki in disguise.

Even his effort to flaunt his geopolitical heft by meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office last week was overshadowed when the White House later posted an AI-generated image of Trump as the pope.

Nawrocki is trailing Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski by 7 percentage points according to POLITICO’s poll of polls ahead of the first round of the presidential election on May 18. The top two candidates go through to the second round on June 1 — which currently appears likely to be a face-off between Trzaskowski and Nawrocki.

The election is a crucial one. PiS hopes that a Nawrocki victory will reverse its political fortunes ahead of the next parliamentary election due in 2027. The government, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, wants Trzaskowski in the presidential palace to help advance its legislative agenda, which is currently being blocked by pro-PiS incumbent President Andrzej Duda.

But that’s now in danger thanks to the real estate kerfuffle.

Nawrocki set the trap for himself by responding in a TV debate to a question on whether he favored a tax on owners of multiple properties. He didn’t, but added that, like other “ordinary Poles,” he owned only “a single apartment.”

But when the Onet news portal looked into that claim, it found he owned a second flat in the coastal city of Gdańsk. Nawrocki said he had taken possession of the apartment in return for taking care of its elderly owner, Jerzy Żywicki.

“I was taking care of an old ailing man who had been my neighbor for years,” Nawrocki said, adding the two had lost touch last year.

Onet, however, managed to track Żywicki down in a retirement home. Reporters also talked to one of his caretakers, who said: “I remember Mr. Jerzy sitting in his apartment in the dark in the winter, cold, wearing a jacket. He had no money to pay for electricity.”

Magdalena Biejat, the presidential candidate for The Left, said she wants prosecutors to look into the case. | Jarek Praszkiewicz/EPA

Nawrocki’s campaign reacted with fury. During a rowdy press conference on Tuesday, campaign chief Paweł Szefernaker and other PiS politicians presented the case as an attack on their candidate orchestrated by the special services on the orders of Tusk’s government.

PiS MP Przemysław Czarnek said there was “no indication that the apartment was acquired due to assuming care of ” Żywicki.

But Nawrocki’s spokesperson, Emilia Wierzbicki, earlier suggested the very opposite: “Nawrocki provided Mr. Jerzy with money to buy out the apartment, which Mr. Jerzy promised to transfer to Nawrocki in return for the assistance he had received,” she said on X.

The press conference also produced a notarial act indicating Nawrocki had bought the flat from Żywicki in 2012 for 120,000 złoty (€30,000). But Nawrocki undermined that assertion by saying in an interview on Tuesday that he hadn’t paid the money up front — as the notarial agreement asserted — but rather paid it out over 14 years. That has opened him to accusations that he lied to the notary — a potential crime.

Adding to Nawrocki’s problems, a statement of assets shows that he also owns half of a third apartment together with his sister. That puts him well beyond the orbit of ordinary Poles, as skyrocketing real estate prices and high mortgage rates have made apartments increasingly unaffordable.

It has also left him vulnerable to attacks from his political rivals.

Magdalena Biejat, the presidential candidate for The Left, said she wants prosecutors to look into the case. “Mr. Jerzy was deceived, and the perpetrator must face consequences. Politicians are meant to address pathologies in the housing market, not profit from them,” Biejat said on social media.

More worryingly for Nawrocki, it’s also exposing him to attacks from Sławomir Mentzen, the presidential candidate for the far-right Confederation party who is running third in the polls. On Tuesday Mentzen unleashed a ferocious attack on his PiS rival.

“Nawrocki has done a totally disgusting thing,” he posted on Facebook, calling on conservative voters to abandon Law and Justice. “I can’t imagine how something like this could be acceptable to someone with any social sensitivity. Meanwhile, all of PiS is defending it.”

That line was supported by Żywicki’s estranged son, who called the transaction a “scam” in a television interview.

Tusk also waded in.

“If I understand it correctly, Nawrocki was supposed to take care of Mr. Jerzy but took care of his flat instead. So I’m wondering if we would like him to take care of Poland,” the prime minister said in a video posted on X on Monday.

Tusk also ordered his administration to prepare recommendations on “how Polish law can effectively protect seniors against fraud and scammers.”

For now Law and Justice is standing firmly behind Nawrocki, who is not formally a party member.

“I vouch for Karol Nawrocki,” said PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński, adding he did not regret having chosen him as the party’s candidate while also lambasting the media for its coverage of the issue: “You are making things up. You’re political operatives.”