The move follows allegations released in the week prior to Christmas by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) which claimed that Turowski had lied during his so-called lustracja, or vetting, declaration, in which high-ranking public servants are obliged to reveal whether they had contacts with the communist security services during the Cold War era.
Tomasz Turowski, Poland’s so-called ‘titular’ ambassador in Moscow, has offered his resignation after allegations that he collaborated with the Kremlin while working as a secret agent in the Vatican, Cuba and Russia.
Turowski is not to be confused by the ambassador to Russia, Wojciech Zajaczkowski. Allegations have emerged that Turowski was a secret agent who infiltrated the Vatican during the seventies and eighties via the Jesuit Order in Rome. He later left Holy Orders and married. In 1993, Turowski joined the Foreign Ministry, serving in Moscow and Cuba, the latter as ambassador from 2001. He has been described by the Rzeczpospolita daily as “one of the most secretive figures in the foreign service”.
The ultra-conservative newspaper Nasz Dziennik has claimed that Turowski collaborated with Russian agent Grigorij Jakimiszyn - who allegedly worked under the codename Agent Olin - during that period. Returning to Moscow, Turowski was the ambassador in office during the Smolensk tragedy last April, and he was present at the airport on the fateful morning of April 10. According to Nasz Dziennik, immediately after the crash, Turowski passed on incorrect information that three people had survived and that they had been taken to hospital in a critical condition. In the event all 96 died but the uncorroborated piece of information has already provided fuel to conspiracy theorists. Turowski’s resignation has been accepted by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Radoslaw Sikorski.
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