A press conference was held today at noon at the Office of the Pomeranian Region of PO RP in Gdansk by MP Agnieszka Pomaska with the participation of Dr. Dariusz Wieczorek regarding a notification to the prosecutor’s office in connection with Minister Sasin’s manipulation of companies’ share prices.
In recent days, Minister Sasin has announced – not for the first time – the introduction of a tax on excess profits of large companies. Not for the first time, because as early as September 24, 2022 (interestingly, on Saturday after 8:00 pm), Minister Sasin, via the social network Twitter, published a post with the following content: „Already yesterday I addressed to Prime Minister @MorawieckiM a solution for taxing windfall profits of state-owned companies and private enterprises. The estimated revenue to the budget is PLN 13.5 billion, which we will use to mitigate the effects of rising energy prices.”
On the next day of trading on the Stock Exchange, i.e. September 26, 2022, energy companies saw significant declines relative to the September 23 quotation (the last quotation before Minister Sasin’s Twitter post). The WIG20 closed at 1433.08 points, down 1.69% and reaching its lowest level since March 2020.
September 29, 2022. The Treasury sold 14,161,080 shares of Polski Koncern Naftowy Orlen S.A. to Powszechny Zakład Ubezpieczeń S.A. and 14,161,080 shares of PKN ORLEN to Powszechna Kasa Oszczędności Bank Polski S.A. – it is estimated that, as a result of the price drop, the Treasury received a price about PLN 23.5 million lower on each transaction than it would have received from the sale on the day before Minister Sasin posted the tweet.
The announced new tax ultimately did not come into effect, and work on its implementation has not even begun.
Agnieszka Pomaska: In connection with the above, there was a violation of Article 183 of the Financial Instruments Trading Act. Therefore, I am submitting a notice to the prosecutor’s office about the possibility of a crime committed by Minister Jacek Sasin, who manipulated the price of stock exchange shares. (…) The loss to the Treasury caused by this one tweet by Minister Sasin alone amounted to 47 million zlotys.
