A former MP and politician in Poland has been charged with espionage for Russia and China, according to a report.

The politician, identified only as "Mateusz P." under Polish privacy laws, was detained by the country’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) in 2016.

Mateusz P., who was once an MP for Poland’s Samoobrona (Self-Defence) party and headed the Zmiana (Change) grouping, has been charged with working for the Russian and Chinese intelligence services and against Poland’s national interests, broadcaster RMF FM reported, citing a bill of indictment that it said prosecutors had submitted against the suspect.

A regional branch of the National Public Prosecutor's Office in Poland’s central Mazowieckie province has sent the bill of indictment to a court, RMF FM reported on Monday.

Prosecutors believe that Mateusz P. in his former role as a politician -- using his numerous contacts at home and abroad, among journalists and in political circles -- promoted Russia’s national interests, RMF FM reported.

He is also suspected of provoking anti-Polish sentiment among Ukrainians and anti-Ukrainian sentiment among Poles, RMF FM said. According to prosecutors, his actions aimed to deepen divisions between Poland and Ukraine.

According to prosecutors, Mateusz P. undertook these activities in conspiracy with Russian security services and obtained substantial financial gain in exchange, RMF FM reported.

The broadcaster cited prosecutors as saying an investigation had revealed that Mateusz P. also worked for the Chinese intelligence service against Poland’s national interests until October 2015.

When Mateusz P. was detained in 2016, the deputy head of the Change grouping, Konrad Rękas, said that Internal Security Agency officers had searched the apartments of members of the grouping’s national authorities, demanding the handover of hard drives, data storage devices, documents, and other items, RMF FM reported.

Rękas insisted at the time that Mateusz P. and other Change activists were "doing business in accordance with the law in Poland, despite being harassed by state authorities," according to RMF FM.

Spying carries a prison term of one to 10 years in Poland, RMF FM reported.

(gs/pk)

Source: rmf24.pl</s>WARSAW (Reuters) - The United States is serious about the security of its ally Poland, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Wednesday after meeting U.S. President Donald Trump in Warsaw.

"We see ourselves as loyal partners who cooperate on a number of issues, among others on security," Duda told a joint news conference with Trump in Warsaw's Royal Castle.

 "I have a feeling that the United States is serious about Poland's security."

 Poland hosts some 900 U.S. troops as part of a rotating NATO force in eastern Europe to counter potential threats from Russia.

 

 (Reporting by Marcin Goclowski and Justyna Pawlak; editing by Andrew Roche)</s>WARSAW (Reuters) - A trip to Poland by U.S. President Donald Trump next week may feel like a diplomatic coup for the right-wing government, but western European nations are uneasy it will encourage Warsaw's defiance towards Brussels. 

 Trump visits Poland for one day - en route to a G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany - to take part in a gathering of leaders from central Europe, Baltic states and the Balkans, an event convened by Poland to bolster regional trade and infrastructure.

 Brussels diplomats view the July 6 gathering, dubbed the Three Seas summit because the countries involved border the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas, as a Polish bid to carve out influence outside the European Union with which the nationalist government has repeatedly clashed.

 Trump plans to promote U.S. natural gas exports to the leaders from central and eastern Europe, a region heavily reliant on Russian supplies, his top economic adviser said. Poland received its first shipment of U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) this month. 

 Most diplomats in Brussels dismiss the importance of the Three Seas project, co-hosted by Croatia, but are wary over Trump's high-profile visit to participate in a project one senior EU official called Poland's push towards "self-ghettoisation".

 "One cannot but feel a bit suspicious if it isn't an attempt to break up European unity," another EU diplomat said about the Three Seas project. 

 Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has played a major role in fuelling a deepening rift between ex-communist and Western members of the European Union, at a time when the bloc is struggling with the aftermath of Britain's decision to leave.

 Since winning a parliamentary election in 2015, the PiS has angered France over a canceled army procurement deal, brought relations with Germany to their worst in nearly a decade, and is facing EU action over what critics call its authoritarian tilt.

 Poland is one of the leading voices in the region against migration, a view it shares with Trump alongside a disregard for climate change and suspicion of international bodies.

 

 "A MADNESS OF ELITES"

 Underscoring Warsaw's mistrust towards the EU, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo recently called an EU quotas policy for relocation of refugees from the Middle East "a madness of Brussels elites", in a speech in parliament. 

 In turn, EU leaders delivered a snub to Poland's government by steamrolling its objections and reappointing former Polish premier Donald Tusk to chair summits. Szydlo, acting on orders from party boss and long-time Tusk adversary Jaroslaw Kaczynski, had vowed to stop him securing a second 30-month term. 

 Warsaw portrayed the issue as one of fundamental principle, in which vital national interests had been ignored by a Brussels machine dominated by "German diktat". Its crushing defeat showed how far the biggest of the ex-communist states that joined the EU after the Cold War appears isolated, even in Eastern Europe.

 Deeply distrustful of Moscow, Poland hopes Trump, who once called NATO "obsolete", will reconfirm his commitment to the alliance's military build-up in eastern Europe, a deterrence policy against Russia, and possibly promise more.

 The United States has about 900 troops on Polish soil as part of a rotating NATO contingent in eastern Europe.

 

 NATO AND TRUMP

 But Western diplomats are wary that Trump could use his trip to Warsaw to repeat criticism of Europe's low defense spending, which has irritated many Western leaders. 

 Trump denounced some NATO members' failure to meet a joint target of two percent of economic output, at a meeting of alliance leaders in Brussels last month. Poland, alongside the United States, is one of the few members who meet the goal.

 "We are not sure what Trump's message is going to be ... If he is here to reinforce Washington's commitment to (NATO's mutual defense principle)? Great!," one EU diplomat said.

 "What if he makes it conditional, to be based on meeting the ... spending goal? This would cause a lot of damage."

 Diplomatic observers who watch Washington say Trump may want to use the trip to deliver a message that he is serious about countering threats from Russia. 

 "Most of the countries (at the Warsaw summit) see Russia as their main security threat and most strongly support NATO and would like a stronger U.S. force presence in their countries," said Heather Conley, who was a State Department official in the George W. Bush administration.

 

 "GET OUT AND TRAVEL"

 Some western European officials view Trump's nod to the Warsaw government as counter-productive at a time when European unity is wavering.

 "We encourage Mr Trump to get out and travel as much as he can. He needs to understand Europe and he can do that by getting out and speaking to people, to European leaders," said one European official, who declined to be named.

 "(But) he can't do deals with individual countries over the head of the European Union," he said. "In Hamburg, he will hear different arguments, we can clear up anything that has been misconstrued." 

 Poland has expressed hopes Trump can persuade U.S. business to invest in a network of north-south rail and road links central to the regional initiative, something U.S. diplomats and many economists dismiss as unrealistic.

 Much commerce in eastern Europe is done along east-west trade routes rather than between north and south, to a large degree a reflection of German economic dominance.

 Some governments in the east may also view Poland's ambitions of regional leadership with suspicion, cautious not to damage relations with trade partners in Berlin.

 "We are monitoring it," said a Czech government source. "But we don't put much weight on it at the moment."

 

 (Additional reporting by Pawel Sobczak in Warsaw, Alastair Macdonald and Robin Emmott in Brussels, Michel Rose in Paris, and Roberta Rampton in Washington, editing by Peter Millership)</s>Reporters Without Borders accuses the world's 3 superpowers – the US, China and Russia – of leading the charge against press freedom

PARIS, France – Press freedom around the world is under threat from a triple whammy of US President Donald Trump, Russia and China's bid to crush all dissent, a watchdog said Wednesday, April 25.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned that a "climate of hatred and animosity" towards journalists combined with growing attempts to control the media pose a "threat to democracies".

Its annual report said that reporters were the target of a growing wave of authoritarianism with leaders whipping up hostility against them.

The group accused the world's 3 superpowers – the US, China and Russia – of leading the charge against press freedom, with Trump regularly launching personal attacks on reporters and Beijing exporting its "media control model" to strangle dissent elsewhere in Asia.

The slide towards "strongman" and populist politics in Europe, stoked by Moscow, was threatening freedoms in the region where they were once safest, it added, with Hungary, Slovakia and Poland setting off alarm bells.

Czech President Milos Zeman turned up at a press conference with a fake Kalashnikov inscribed with the words "for journalists" while Slovakia's former leader Robert Fico called journalists "filthy anti-Slovak prostitutes" and "idiotic hyenas".

"The unleashing of hatred towards journalists is dangerous and a threat to democracy," RSF chief Christophe Deloire told Agence France-Presse.

"Political leaders who fuel loathing for reporters... undermine the concept of public debate based on facts instead of propaganda. To dispute the legitimacy of journalism today is to play with extremely dangerous political fire," he added.

RSF said that hostility towards the media is "no longer confined to authoritarian countries such as Turkey and Egypt", but was poisoning the political atmosphere in some of the great democracies.

"More and more democratically elected leaders no longer see the media as part of democracy's essential underpinning, but as an adversary to which they openly display their aversion," the report said, picking out Trump, India's Narendra Modi and Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte for particular criticism.

The US president had referred to reporters as "enemies of the people", a term once used by Stalin, it said.

RSF accused Vladimir Putin’s Russia of "stifling independent voices at home… and extending its propaganda network by means of media outlets such as RT (Russian Today) and Sputnik."

It had even harsher words for Beijing, saying "Xi Jinping's China is getting closer and closer to a contemporary version of totalitarianism.

"Censorship and surveillance reached unprecedented levels thanks to the massive use of new technology" in his first term in office, the report said.

Now the Chinese government "is trying to establish a 'new world media order' under its influence, by exporting its oppressive methods, information censorship system and Internet surveillance tools," it added.

"Its unabashed desire to crush all pockets of public resistance unfortunately has imitators in Asia," the RSF said, condemning Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's "ruthless offensive" against the media.

It said Beijing's influence and tactics were also being felt in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Turkey – the world's biggest jailer of journalists – has fallen into the most repressive 25 countries in the world.

The watchdog said that "media-phobia" there is now so pronounced that journalists are routinely accused of terrorism and "those who don't offer loyalty are arbitrarily imprisoned."

North Korea remains the most repressive country on Earth closely followed by Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Syria and then China.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrein, Vietnam, Sudan and Cuba also remain among the worst offenders, according to the RSF ranking of 180 countries.

Malta tumbled 18 places to 65 after the assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

But not all the news was bad. Ecuador jumped 13 places after tensions eased between the government and privately-owned media, while Justin Trudeau's Canada entered the European-dominated top 20.

Jamaica climbed to 8th overall, above Belgium and New Zealand, and Gambia jumped 21 places – the biggest rise in Africa – just ahead of Angola and Zimbabwe.

The departure of the 3 African countries' "predatory presidents" was the main reason for their improved performance, the RSF said.

As usual, Scandinavian countries topped the list with Norway deemed as having the world's freest press for the second year in a row. – Rappler.com</s>The group accused the world's three superpowers -- the US, China and Russia -- of leading the charge against press freedom, with Trump regularly launching personal attacks on reporters and Beijing exporting its "media control model" to strangle dissent elsewhere in Asia.

The slide towards "strongman" and populist politics in Europe, stoked by Moscow, was threatening freedoms in the region where they were once safest, it added, with Hungary, Slovakia and Poland setting off alarm bells.

"Political leaders who fuel loathing for reporters... undermine the concept of public debate based on facts instead of propaganda. To dispute the legitimacy of journalism today is to play with extremely dangerous political fire," he added.

RSF said that hostility towards the media is "no longer confined to authoritarian countries such as Turkey and Egypt", but was poisoning the political atmosphere in some of the great democracies.

"More and more democratically elected leaders no longer see the media as part of democracy's essential underpinning, but as an adversary to which they openly display their aversion," the report said, picking out Trump, India's Narendra Modi and Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte for particular criticism.

The US president had referred to reporters as "enemies of the people", a term once used by Stalin, it said.

"Censorship and surveillance reached unprecedented levels thanks to the massive use of new technology" in his first term in office, the report said.

Now the Chinese government "is trying to establish a 'new world media order' under its influence, by exporting its oppressive methods, information censorship system and Internet surveillance tools," it added.

The watchdog said that "media-phobia" there is now so pronounced that journalists are routinely accused of terrorism and "those who don't offer loyalty are arbitrarily imprisoned."</s>US, China and Russia were accused of leading the charge against press freedom (File)</s>The US has unwittingly triggered a reset in relations between Russia, China and India, bringing the three closer together, Sputnik political observer Dmitry Kosyrev notes, commenting on the April 24 summit of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Beijing.

Following the talks between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Wang announced that President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold an informal meeting on April 27-28 with the focus on the world's profound changes and a long-term cooperation strategy.

For his part, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized that a "comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation with China is a key priority of Russia's foreign policy" during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart on April 23.

It is hardly surprising that under the current circumstances Russia, China and India are teaming up and openly voicing their position, the journalist noted, in reference to US President Donald Trump's tariff war unleashed on China in March 2018, a new package of anti-Russian sanctions announced by Washington on April 6 and the US-led coalition's April 14 missile strike on Syria under the pretext of an alleged chemical attack in Douma on April 7.

"Both parties agree that the missile strike on Syria delivered by the United States and its allies was a flagrant violation of international law," Lavrov stated at a joint press conference with Wang.

However, while the position of both Moscow and Beijing was clear from the outset, New Delhi's response to the US attack was less categorical: India has urged all parties involved to show restraint and call for an impartial investigation into the alleged Douma strike.

According to Kosyrev, India has never been interested in crossing swords with Washington. At the same time, New Delhi has viewed the development of the Beijing-led One Belt One Road initiative with suspicion as it involved India's longstanding geostrategic rival and China's partner — Pakistan. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has become nothing short of an apple of discord between Beijing and New Delhi. On the other hand, tensions remain high between the two Asian giants over their activities in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

The question then arises as to why New Delhi has taken steps towards Beijing, regardless of the differences of opinions.

Commenting on the issue Kosyrev presumed that India does not want to become Washington's tool in the US' geopolitical game against China. "This is the question of a strategic prudence," the journalist presumed.

"Like China, India does not hail trade wars, especially at a time of rapid economic growth," Kosyrev noted. "They will deprive the two powers of the prospects [of development]. Had the US not 'attacked' China (and Russia) the Indians would have probably stood aside. And now America has brought them closer, gaining exactly the opposite to what it wanted."

He opined that amid the ongoing tariff war with the US "China's confrontation with India would be tantamount to getting besieged from all the sides, and would certainly not augur well for China's security as well as economic interests."

At the same time, "there could be immense opportunities for India's exports," the academic noted suggesting that India could get larger access to the Chinese market especially when it comes to "agricultural products including soybeans and other competitive products from India's IT and pharma industries."

According to the Chinese media outlet Global Times, "the recent China-US trade conflict… [has] remind[ed] China, India and other countries with dreams of rejuvenation that China and India still need strategic unity in order to reshape the old international political and economic order."

"China and India must build a new strategic framework that faces the future," the media outlet highlighted.

After the Wuhan summit, India, Russia and China's leaders will meet within the framework of the annual SCO summit in China's eastern coastal city of Qingdao on June 9-10.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.</s>Poland continues its decline in the World Press Freedom Index, coming in at #58 out of 180 countries in the new 2018 listing by Reporters Without Borders. This sandwiches it between Fiji and the Dominican Republic, and ties Poland with its record low rank of 2006.

In a scathing justification of Poland’s position titled “Blinded by Ideology,” Reporters Without Borders cited the tightening of control by the ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party over public media, which it says has been “transformed into government propaganda mouthpieces.”

The report also criticizes the government’s charges last year against journalist Tomasz Piątek for alleging that (now former) Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz has ties to the Russian government and organized crime, as well as a record fine of nearly 1.5 million PLN by regulators against broadcaster TVN24 for showing footage of demonstrations against media restrictions. (Both actions were later reversed under intense domestic and international pressure.)

The right-leaning Polish Journalists Association (SDP) has accused Reporters Without Borders in the past of being less harsh on PiS’ rival Platforma (PO) party when it made shakeups to state media during its time in power. It was then, in early 2015, that Poland achieved its record high Index rank of #18.

Since then the country has fallen to #47 in 2016, #54 last year, and now #58. Its current numerical score – 26.59 – is an all time high (indicating less press freedom). In comparison, the number one country (Norway) scored 7.63, and North Korea came in last at 88.7.

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières), founded in 1985, is a Paris-based non-governmental organization which aims to promote freedom of information and the press worldwide. Their Press Freedom Index has been released annually since 2002.</s>The deal follows its acquisition of Caprica Healthcare in January.

Stackhouse Poland has bought Birmingham-based corporate insurance broker Honor Point for an undisclosed sum.

According to Stackhouse Poland, Honour Point was founded in 1996 and focuses on mid to large corporate and global clients many in the publishing, arts, heritage property and charity sectors.

It is the second deal this year for Stackhouse Poland which bought Blackburn-based broker Caprica Healthcare in January.

Partnership

 Dominic Dolan, managing director and founder of Honour Point said: “I am delighted with the opportunities our new partnership with Stackhouse Poland brings for the benefit of our clients as we continue to grow our business.

“It was important that we found a successor firm with a similar cultural service ethic and Stackhouse Poland has a fantastic reputation for high service standards so it is a perfect fit for the business moving forward.”

Stackhouse Poland’s chairman Jeremy Cary commented: “Our strategy continues to be focused on strong organic growth in our chosen sectors and additionally via acquisition of like-minded companies.

“Honour Point’s relationship and advice driven approach to their clients in the white collar sectors that we also operate in will fit perfectly with Stackhouse Poland. We are really looking forward to working with their team and continuing to build our specialist business.”

In the last two years Stackhouse Poland, which posted a turnover of £19.1m in its last set of results, has also purchased E Coleman & Co and Lucas Fettes.

For all the latest industry news direct to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter.</s>MANILA (BLOOMBERG) - Russia and China are just some of the promising destinations for Filipinos looking for jobs abroad as the Philippines seeks to cut its reliance on the Middle East.

"Russia is opening their market for the first time to the Philippines," Bernard Olalia, head of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, said in an interview in his office in Manila. "They want a government-to-government deployment scheme, just like what we did with China."

Russia is hiring skilled workers in construction and services and China is asking the Philippines to send over 2,000 English teachers this year, Olalia said on April 20. The Czech Republic and San Marino are also negotiating labour deals, he said.

For decades, the Philippines has relied on money sent home by millions of overseas workers to boost the economy and support the currency. The funds - estimated by the World Bank to be US$33 billion (S$43.6 billion) last year - account for about 10 per cent of gross domestic product and are the nation's largest source of foreign exchange after exports.

With exports faltering and stocks suffering outflows, officials are banking on remittances to help stabilize the peso, Asia's worst-performing currency this year.

The Middle East remains the largest destination for land-based workers with more than 1 million deployed in 2016, accounting for 63 per cent of the total. But the brutal killing of a domestic worker, whose body was found stuffed in a freezer in Kuwait, pushed President Rodrigo Duterte to order a deployment ban to the Arab state since February.

The Philippines is flexing its muscle to protect workers in other Middle Eastern countries amid cases of employer abuse, Olalia said.

A deployment ban to Saudi Arabia isn't far-fetched unless better labour conditions are provided, he said.

"We don't mind advising the President to impose a deployment ban in countries where our Filipino workers are suffering so much, like Kuwait," Olalia said.

The outlook for labour demand is strong and deployment will keep growing, Olalia said.

Ageing populations are prompting Japan and South Korea to place more job orders for Filipino health workers, while Singapore is looking to hire in its technology sector.

According to Olalia, the administration's policy now is to focus on skilled workers and professionals, whose working conditions are significantly better.

The government is also offering workers a way home.

Officials are planning "reverse job fairs" in the Middle East to lure Filipino carpenters, welders and pipe-fitters back to the Philippines, Olalia said. Even so, the agency admits it would be tough to match the salaries abroad, which can typically go as much as 300 per cent higher than domestic wages.

"Compensation abroad is really higher than in the Philippines. But if you consider the social factor, the separation from family - that's more important than financial gain," Olalia said.
A former MP from Poland's Samoobrona party is charged with spying for Russia and China.