# Roman Giertych

Roman Jacek Giertych (Polish pronunciation:; born 27 February 1971) is a Polish political figure and advocate, Giertych served in a PiS-lead government as Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and Minister of National Education from May 2006 to August 2007. He was a member of the Sejm from 2001 to 2007 and the chairman of the League of Polish Families party and, in 1989, founder of the Polish nationalist and far-right organization All-Polish Youth.
Since 2007, he has run his law firm in Warsaw, representing clients in various high-profile cases. He is a member of the Sejm again, effectively for KO, since late 2023.

## Early life

Born in Śrem, Roman Giertych comes from a family of Polish politicians, a son of Maciej Giertych and a grandson of Jędrzej Giertych. His uncle on his father's side is Wojciech Giertych, O.P., Theologian of the Pontifical Household and professor of theology at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome. Two of his aunts also entered religious life.
He spent his entire early life in Kórnik, where he finished both primary and secondary school. He graduated from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, with Master's degrees in History (1989-1994) and Law (1990-1995). Following this, he completed his advocate apprenticeship in Warsaw in the year 2000. His apprenticeship supervisor was Polish advocate, Zdzisław Krzemiński, an expert in family and civil law and a supporter of Endecja.

## Political career

Giertych and the LPR had a strong national and anti-EU profile. Prior to the 2003 Polish referendum on EU membership, the LPR campaigned against it, denouncing it as a "centralised, socialist superstate". Officially, the LPR declares that it favours a "Europe of nations". Under Giertych's leadership, the LPR was successful in the European Parliament elections in June 2004, temporarily becoming the second-strongest Polish party with 14% of the votes. His father Maciej Giertych was elected MEP. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, LPR gained 8% of the votes.
In July 2004, Giertych was elected a member and vice-chairman of PKN Orlen investigation commission, which is credited, among other things, with destroying the presidential aspirations of Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz.

### Minister of Education

On 5 May 2006, Giertych was appointed minister of education and vice-premier, while the LPR joined a governmental coalition with PiS. His nomination was largely controversial because of his nationalist and authoritarian views. The following day, about 100 people protested in front of the Ministry of Education against this appointment. A couple of weeks, later almost 140 000 people signed a petition to remove him from the post.
In March 2007 Giertych proposed a bill that would ban homosexual people from the teaching profession and would also allow dismiss from employment those teachers who promote "the culture of homosexual lifestyle".

### Later activity

The PiS-led coalition collapsed in mid-2007, triggering strife between the former partners. After losses in the elections of late 2007, Giertych stood down as leader of the LPR and left the party in 2009, which had already been deserted by most adherents such as Krzysztof Bosak and Robert Winnicki. Giertych became an active opponent of former coalition partner PiS. He declared numerous times to vote for PO, co-founded several political initiatives and established himself as a busy investigator of embezzlement charges against PiS cadre, while he is perceived critically in parts of the liberal public. Although Giertych changed party allegiance, he largely remains a proponent of right-wing politics, as is seen in his stance on abortion. He announced his intention to run for the Polish Senate in the 2023 Polish election, but he decided against it after the left-wing Nowa Lewica strongly opposed to him. Instead, he has been offered to be a candidate for the Polish Sejm in 2023, on KO's lists, which he accepted. Since autumn 2023, he is a member of the Sejm following the 2023 Polish parliamentary election from the list of Civic Coalition. In January 2024, he was chosen to be deputy chairman of an investigation committee of the Civic Coalition parliament faction.

## Legal career and legal issues

After leaving parliament in 2007, Giertych returned to legal practice. His legal practice was perceived as a way to keep in touch with politics, for he mostly served public figures in cases with high media attention. He represented entrepreneur Ryszard Krauze, accused of dealing with a gang, in a trial in which the claim was allowed in the first instance, consequently ordering Telewizja Polska (Polish Television) and Anita Gargas to apologize to the entrepreneur. He was also the attorney of Radosław Sikorski regarding offensive comments made on the internet forum of the weekly Wprost website.
Giertych was involved in helping the Jewish community of Góra Kalwaria to reclaim and restore a local synagogue. He was the lawyer of the then head of the European Council, Donald Tusk, in an inquiry into the cooperation of Polish services with the Russian FSB. He also represented the Tusk's family. He was Michał Tusk's attorney in his successful case against yellow press daily Fakt, as well as in a case concerning damage to property. Giertych was also Katarzyna Tusk's attorney in a trial, resulting in an apology of Fakt. He represented Donald Tusk in cases before prosecutors, the Amber Gold Investigation Committee and the VAT Investigation Committee.
Giertych also represented Austrian businessman Gerald Birgfellner in a case against the development company Srebrna ("Silver") and an affiliated dispute with Jarosław Kaczyński, as well as Leszek Czarnecki in two cases.
In 2009, Giertych himself won a lawsuit brought against the publisher of the Fakt for the protection of personal rights. In 2017, he won a case before the Supreme Court concerning the liability of website publishers for user comments.
The deputy prosecutor general Bogdan Święczkowski filed a motion against Giertych to the bar's disciplinary court to punish him for criticism he had expressed towards Zbigniew Ziobro and the prosecutor's office in late 2016. Giertych stated that this procedure had been motivated politically. In 2020, it was dismissed.

### Polnord trial

On 15 October 2020, Giertych was detained on accusations of money laundering. He, together with 12 other suspects, was accused to have trepanned 92 Mio. Złoty via fictitious obligations in 2014 out of real estate company Polnord, a former key player on the Polish market. The operation was represented to have benefited, among others, then-shareholder Ryszard Krauze, a fellow suspect and legal client of Giertych, who is a former billionaire struggling with bankruptcy since about 2010.
On 20 July 2020, the European Commission mirrored a statement of the Polish National Bar Council indicating that defense lawyers acting in politically sensitive cases were intensively screened by the authorities. Giertych, together with fellow lawyers Jacek Dubois and Mikołaj Pietrzak, filed a complaint against Zbigniew Ziobro and his deputy to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
In late December 2021, Associated Press revealed that according to Canadian NGO Citizen Lab, the phone Giertych used in 2019 was infected by the Pegasus spy tool. In February 2022, Giertych spoke at a public hearing in the European Parliament about, among other things, the abuse of Pegasus in Poland.
On 29 March 2022, the Court did not consent to the temporary arrest demanded by the prosecutors due to alleged high probability of guilt. On 29 April 2022, the Regional Court in Lublin upheld the decision of a lower instance.
In June 2022, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe urged the European Commission to take a firm stance against the repression of political dissidents, as whom it identified Giertych. In July 2022, the European Commission published a report on the state of the rule of law in Poland that agreed with the aforementioned opinion.
Before the fall elections of 2023, Giertych largely stayed in Italy, where he owns a mansion. Critics argued that he was evading subpoena while staying abroad. He campaigned remotely and reappeared in public during the swearing-in ceremony. In January 2025 the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Lublin announced the discontinuation of the investigation concerning Giertych, while 8 out of 12 other suspects still await trial.