Highway management company owes state millions
PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek
28.08.2017 09:35
Autostrada Wielkopolska, which manages a western part of Poland’s A2 highway, owes the government PLN 895 million (EUR 210 million) for overvalued compensation payouts, the niezalezna.pl portal has reported.
Photo: Kolanin/Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
Jerzy Szmit, a deputy infrastructure and building minister, told the portal that Autostrada Wielkopolska, as other companies like it, were compensated for a 2005 decision to allow trucks to use paid highways toll-free, because they were already paying for vignettes.
The compensation was to make up for the loss in income after the decision was introduced, niezalezna.pl said.
But the portal added that compensation paid to Autostrada Wielkopolska was based on outdated figures.
Poland put the issue to the European Commission in 2012, and it last Friday decided that Autostrada Wielkopolska owed the state PLN 895 million.
Szmit told the portal that he was satisfied with the commission’s decision.
Autostrada Wielkopolska said in a statement that it needed to have a closer look at Brussels’ explanation.
The company is owned by Poland’s richest family, the Kulczyks, whose patriarch Jan Kulczyk died in 2015.
Jan Kulczyk was allegedly among those recorded in Poland’s “waitergate” wire-tapping scandal, which shook the Civic Platform-led government in 2014.
Between July 2013 and June 2014, the conversations of people in the upper echelons of Polish politics, business and public service were recorded without their knowledge at the fashionable Sowa & Przyjaciele restaurant in Warsaw and later leaked to media. (vb/pk)