A big scandal in the Polish Army. In the background, up to PLN 300 million

The military affairs department of the District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw is looking into the sale of defective Grot rifles to the army, “Onet” reported. The investigation was initiated in April and concerns the abuse of powers and failure to fulfill duties by high officials and officers.

The prosecutor's office initiated an investigation into the Grot rifles

The proceedings are conducted in two directions. The first concerns the head and some soldiers of the Armament Inspectorate. The time range is from February to November 2017.

It was then that abuses occurred in the form of issuing a decision and a qualification test protocol for the Grot rifle that did not take into account the weapon's defects. At that time, the head of the IU was Brig. Gen. Dariusz Pluta.

The prosecutor's office informs that this resulted in the delivery of over 41,000 to the Armed Forces. copies of the defective 5.56 mm MSBS Grot carbine. In her opinion, it was an act to the detriment of the public interest in order to obtain financial benefits from the supplier of the rifle, Fabryka Broni “Łucznik” Radom. The amount of benefit achieved is to be no less than PLN 299.5 million.

The heads of JW NIL continued the contracts

The next line of investigation covers the period from September 2017 to December 2023 and focuses on the abuse of powers and failure to fulfill duties by the commanders of the NIL Military Unit. During this period, they were: Col. Mirosław Krupa, Col. Andrzej Gardynik, Col. Piotr Gomuła. The last of them is still in office.

The abuse described by the prosecutor's office consisted in the execution of the contract for the supply of Grot rifles by the unit and the signing of subsequent annexes to the contract, which was also said to be an act to the detriment of the public interest in order to obtain a financial benefit for the weapons manufacturer.

Problems from the very beginning

The first problems with Grot rifles appeared already in 2017, when “Fakt” found that the contract for their supply was signed by the Ministry of National Defense before the weapon tests were completed. The contract amounted to half PLN 500 million.

At that time, the ministry commanded by Antoni Macierewicz explained that the requirement for qualification tests by the ministry was the completion of factory tests of weapons and that “the level of advancement of the tests is so advanced that it guarantees the positive completion of the tests.”

Faulty rifles and faulty translations

The first production defects were revealed by “Onet”, which in January 2021 published a 30-page report on weapons tests. Its authors documented22 failures, defects and design defects of the tip and determined that the rifle rusts, overheats, jams due to sand, the stock breaks upon impact, and some defects make it impossible to shoot.

In response to the article, two things were explained. The first argument was that these were defects of only a few weapons, and the stock crack occurred once every 40,000 years. copies. Two weeks later, a 43,000 repair operation was launched. pieces.

The second argument raised by the Ministry of National Defense was that the problem concerns the first series and is a “childhood problem”. However, this is refuted by the prosecutor's office in its April letter. Her investigation covers all versions of the rifle available on the market.