instagram

Mr K

Say no to censorship, here’s the support page for all of you guys – my friends and the freedom appreciation society… Let’s keep records straight: membership doesn’t actually mean anything. You don’t voice your opinion that way, however I do want to hear feedback from you, which you can provide in either language, using the comments facility below.

Soon you will be provided details of the court case between me and Mr K., whose anonymity is unfortunately enforced by the Polish jurisdiction system, which allows no privilege to report court cases, worse still: it doesn’t even allow me to apply for making the court proceedings public until now… That’s how you have been denied to know… Another instance of censorship.

Do come back here from time to time as this page will contain all relevant information and recent updates on the court proceedings, as well as, fingers crossed: all the plaintiff and claimant documentation made available to me. For the time being, let’s start with saying that I’m the plaintiff in this case…

01/12/2007

As far as my understanding goes, I’m going to be charged with criminal libel. What’s that? Well, good question and there’s a reason for you to ask. Criminal libel is a way of censorship, which is being used mostly by third world countries’ governments against journalists, sometimes leading journalists to jail… No wonder you might not know, because the fact is that in modern democracy you shouldn’t!

Take it easy here. Arrest is not going to be the case with me. Nonetheless, interesting point to make is that I have been contacted by the criminal court (VI Karny w Szczecinie) quite a few times in regards to setting up a date for the initial hearing and the trial itself. So far I have been warned that failure in making my presence soon will lead to my passport being withheld and further actions taken, leading to my arrest.

I’m not going to obstruct the trial anyway as I don’t feel guilty and I’m reasonably happy to make the effort of a trip, but “funny” thing… I have never heard the official charges, nor did my lawyer. At the moment the situation is that it is absolutely mandatory for me to face the trial and or I’m going to be arrested. The court has used all the means to contact me by finding my website on the Internet, calling my mobile and I even made the effort to make their mail being received by providing suitable address.

So far they had approx 2-3 months to announce the charges by any means they want to me or to my lawer but… Neither I, nor my lawyer know what the precise charges are! It’s amazing, isn’t? The prosecutor can call a person, even from abroad, put all the conditions “what if you fail” in front of one and still not to produce any official piece of paper with a single charge being written or voiced!

I’m not going to blow the whistle here, we’ll see how this develops. The initial court hearing took place with my lawyer acting on my behalf. As lawyers of both parties did not reach any agreement, further proceedings are to be taken. It’s going to be mid January, so hopefully I’ve got plenty of time to explain the full story here before the trial commences and then update this page regularly as I move through the case.

05/12/2007 – The Origin

Okay, here’s the origin of the story that took place some five years ago. I was doing business with Mr K. who kindly took me as his subcontractor for one of the database development jobs he had at the time. I never got paid for doing it promptly, despite extensive enhancements to the project. As I couldn’t recover my payment from Mr K. I told him that alternatively the payment could be recovered from his client directly. Soon after I was actually threatened and intimidated by Mr K. Unfortunately (however, I still believe that misfortune is totally at his side), all of my phone conversations were being recorded at the time. The recording went to my massive archive of hours of pointless and important phone conversations mixed together. God knows why I keep all the file(s), or maybe there’s a reason behind it? It turned out that there is.

Few years later (all the dates and details to be provided) Mr K. became a candidate to Polish parliament. Designated by non-significant “Racja” party he was bravely making his way forward into politics. As there is a certain number of names which are being followed by my web crawlers daily, I spotted a website with a list of candidates from Southern-East (Podkarpackie) region of Poland. Oddly enough, it contained name of Mr K. Seeing that raised my eyebrows really high, but not because of the location of his constituency. The location of Mr K.’s constituency is exactly diagonally opposite on the country’s map to the region where he comes from (Szczecin)… Looks like Mr K was trying to escape from something. Maybe Mr K.’s business practices were known far too well in his home region? Well, you can move hundreds of kilometers away, where nobody knows you and in a country like Poland, with a fair bit of money, chances of being elected are fair, even if nobody knows you (it actually increases them provided you back your campaign with right funds)…. Nonetheless, you cannot escape the information age….

Enough is enough. Enough of dishonest or corrupted politicians in Poland. Enough of the trouble caused by people with brains small as marbles and twice as smooth… As I truly believe in that, the recording was found. Subsequently went on air, on line! Let the people have a chance to listen, to know before they make anyone elected. Recording featuring Mr K. made the top result in Google for anyone querying for his name. Everyone interested was able to to listen to the “podcast” on www.oszustwa.pl before casting his vote on Mr K.. Oszustwa.pl at the time was my less known “publishing” brands featuring people like Mr K. The article was making the most read article on the site and the most downloaded media of course… Right place, right person, right on time. What is happening now was bound to happen. I knew what I was doing and I knew it will take some kind of ugly turn. I guess, so it does.

07/12/2007 – The Recording

Okay, here I’m releasing the transcript of the conversation. It originally went online as an .mp3 file, but for the purposes of the court case, a transcript has been made. It’s not something of a flashy kind, and it’s not something I’m proud of making either. I generally think that people’s right to privacy and protection of their image is imperative. No one should secretly record phone conversations made with other, let alone, publish them online. It’s not something that sounds bad as people generally do lot of “erms” and “arms” as they speak, but it’s distasteful as a practice too. Who likes to be recorded by call centres and where does it lead us as a society if everyone starts doing that? I certainly don’t like the idea of recording or being recorded, it’s something which doesn’t look fair, doesn’t sound nice and potentially could be harmful if misused or just partially quoted…

That’s a bit of a foreword, but here I’m dealing with a case of slightly different nature. Despite my quite strong standpoint of disapproval for recording your business partners I decided to make and keep the recording. It turned out that I had a bit of intuition doing that. There’s nothing illegal in recording (your own) conversations with other parties. There was no intention of keeping the recording. It never crossed my mind to release it in public when I made it. I never delete a file from my hard drive, though. So I kept the thing. Not all of the conversations in my office were recorded (as in the transcript), but I didn’t want Mr K to feel any special. After all, why should he feel special? Well, he had become some kind of a special few years after the conversation was recorded. That’s when one of my google alerts said hello in my inbox and I realised that the most dishonest businessman I ever came I across is having a chance to join the leaders of the country: the members of parliament. Can you aim very much higher than that?

The transcript itself is a bit of a lengthy thing, but remember the rule of this site: all the truth, all the details. Probably ninety  per cent of the rubbish in it wouldn’t be much of your interest anyway. I just want your attention to be brought on the following issues: how Mr K. is trying to negate all the work done for him and talk himself out of any responsibilites of paying any amount of money whatsoever for the job done. No papers – no proof. Well, it’s not exactly quite like that, unless you want to leave someone out of pocket. Would you expect asking your friend to build you a program, or a house, and then would you laugh in their face saying “have you got any papers proving that you have build it”? Would you have a bloody cheek to cheat your friend like that? Another point is the threats. Listen or read carefully and decide yourself in your mind: is that a standard business practice to talk about anonymous people in car following your subcontractor just because he’s fairly asking for money for the job he had conducted on a basis that you have told him that you will pay him?

… and finally: would you like such a person to represent you, or anyone really, in the parliament? Would you like any member of parliament practicing probably the same type of cons behind the scenes? I wasn’t the right person to make a judgment, so I refrained from calling Mr K.’s practices by any particular name. The online article went online without any names attached, just simple recording, a title suggesting that Mr K. is not paying his subcontractors and no opinions whatsoever were attached. I guess it’s hard to cast opinions and one need to be very careful when doing that. I didn’t feel like making any. The transcript of the recording makes me confused even right now, but at the time I felt intimidated and threatened. Despite him trying to turn everything into a joke, I felt like it’s more serious at the time and certainly very serious in a context of upcoming elections later on.

The recording was made available for anyone do download shortly before elections and it carried on for some time after. Then the oszustwa.pl project was dropped entirely and taken over by some other guys. I didn’t plan to make any harm to him by having it online for longer then necessary. I do strongly believe that what I’ve done was in public interest and bloody necessary indeed.