Former Polish minister stays abroad amid moves to lift his immunity

WARSAW (Reuters) -A former Polish justice minister skipped parliamentary proceedings on Thursday that could see him stripped of immunity and arrested, seemingly choosing to observe them from Hungary as he believes he will not get a fair hearing in Warsaw.

Speculation over whether Zbigniew Ziobro, who was justice minister from 2015-2023, would attend a parliamentary commission and subsequent vote in the chamber on his immunity has dominated the Polish news agenda for days, with his appearance in Budapest in late October fueling expectations he would remain abroad.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk's pro-EU government is pushing for an investigation of what it says was wrongdoing under the previous nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) administration.

Ziobro, the architect of court reforms that unleashed years of conflict with the European Union over judicial independence, is the highest-profile PiS figure that prosecutors have attempted to press charges against.

The parliamentary vote scheduled to take place on Friday would open the way for him to be charged with 26 crimes, including abuse of power and leading an organised criminal group.

One allegation he faces is misuse of money from the Justice Fund, which is designed to help victims of crime, to purchase the Pegasus spyware system.

Ziobro says the allegations against him are part of a witch hunt orchestrated by the government in revenge for his actions targeting suspected corruption among people close to Tusk and that he will not be treated fairly if he returns to Poland.

"The government is prepared to prevent me from responding to the false allegations formulated in the request to remove my immunity," Ziobro told a news conference on Thursday shown by two nationalist broadcasters who said it was happening in Budapest.

Reuters was not immediately able to confirm his location.

Several of Ziobro's deputies have already faced investigations. One of them, Marcin Romanowski, fled to Hungary where he was granted political asylum.

Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with Ziobro in Budapest last month and accused the current Polish government of launching a "political witch hunt" against the opposition politician.

(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz; Editing by Gareth Jones)