Tusk requests investigation of Russia role in Polish scandal

By VANESSA GERA
Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s top opposition leader has called on the country’s ruling party to fully clarify the facts surrounding an eight-year-old scandal involving the illegal recordings of top politicians and coal imports from Russia. Tusk said Tuesday that it has long been clear that Russia was involved in the affair, but that a parliamentary investigative commission was needed to determine the scale of Russian interference and to what extent any Poles collaborated with Russian intelligence services. The wiretapping and publication of private conversations of top Polish politicians created a scandal in 2014 that damaged the standing of Tusk’s pro-European party, Civic Platform. That scandal helped the populist Law and Justice party win power the following year.