Two former directors of a brokerage division charged with fraud in Poland — RMF24
In Poland, an indictment against two former directors of the brokerage division of one of the banks has been submitted to the District Court in Warsaw. They are accused of defrauding 1,308 clients of more than 387.6 million zlotys. This was reported by RMF24, citing Krzysztof Kopania, spokesperson for the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Łódź.
Sale of fund certificates
The case is one of the episodes of an investigation by the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Łódź and the Poznań branch of the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau. It concerns events from 2012–2015 related to the bank's distribution of certificates of four investment funds through branches across the country.
According to the prosecution, the defendants decided to involve the bank in selling the certificates without properly verifying these investment products. This includes, in particular, the failure to verify the accuracy of data in advertising materials, the funds' investment policy, and underlying assets. The investigation claims that the officials also knew of the poor business reliability of the people managing the funds due to their lack of experience.
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Prosecution's version of a financial pyramid scheme
According to Kopania, buyers of the certificates were misled about the nature of the investments. They believed that the bank, as an institution of public trust, had reliable information about the offered funds. The prosecution states that clients were not informed that exiting the investment while the portfolio was being built depended on further sales of the product, and that the money to redeem the certificates was to come from contributions by other investors rather than from the funds' profits.
In the prosecution's view, this scheme matched the mechanism of a financial pyramid scheme. In May 2016, the banks stopped selling the certificates, after which the funds ceased receiving new money and lost liquidity. In 2017, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority ordered the liquidation of all four funds.
After the funds were liquidated in August 2025, investors who had bought certificates through the bank recovered only part of their invested money. The total losses are estimated at approximately 136 million zlotys. The defendants did not admit guilt, and assets worth around 8.6 million zlotys, including real estate, were secured.
