“He has no authority.” A high-profile dismissal from a government institution

Andrzej Domański announced his decision and the reasons for it in a post on social media. As he stated, Patkowski did not have the proper authority to serve as president of PANA.

“I have dismissed Mr. Piotr Patkowski from the position of President of the Polish Audit Oversight Agency. Mr. Patkowski does not have the competencies necessary to fulfill such an important position for the Polish economy,” X Domański wrote on the website.

Patkowski at PANA

Piotr Patkowski became Mrcalled for the position of President of the Polish Audit Oversight Agency on November 11, 2023. From April 16, 2020 to November 10, 2023, he served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Ministry of Finance and Chief Spokesperson for the Public Finance discipline.

PANA is an institution that functions as a public supervisory body for statutory auditors and accounting firms from 1 January 2020. It replaced the Audit Oversight Commission. The agency has extensive powers because, among other things, it can: deprive the accounting firm of the opportunity to audit annual accounts.

The Minister of Finance supervises PANA’s activities, including by appointing and dismissing PANA’s bodies, granting a statute and approving the financial plan and annual accounts.

For this reason, there has been speculation about Patkowski’s dismissal for weeks. Minister Domański said in one of the interviews that the former Deputy Minister of Finance would most likely lose his position.

– The regulations that determine who can be chairman of PANA clearly indicate that it must be a person who has experience in supervising the exercise of the profession of commissioner. We will determine whether Mr. Patkowski could fill this position and whether any law was broken in his appointment, he said.