FORMER HEAD OF PZU LIFE UNIT CHARGED WITH FRAUD

The former head of PZU Zycie, the life unit of Poland’s state-owned composite insurer PZU, has been charged with fraud. Grzegorz Wieczerzak has been accused of causing losses of 173m zlotys for the assurer and of misappropriating a further 9.5m zlotys. The charges relate to loans that Mr Wieczerzak is alleged to have approved to three firms known to be financially unsound. Prosecutors are claiming that further losses ensued because of overpayments for shares in a privatisation fund and overpriced property deals. Prosecution spokesman Zbigniew Jaskulski said that Mr Wieczerzak faces up to 10 years in jail if he is convicted and added that nine other people had been charged with related offences. Mr Wieczerzak has been in “investigative custody” for over a year, ever since being arrested after entering a plush Warsaw hotel by one entrance, changing his clothes, and attempting to leave by a different exit. The recently elected left-wing Polish government cited this scandal as one of its reasons for reneging on a deal which would have given majority control of PZU to pan-European insurer Eureko.