Prime Minister Marek Belka has rejected the resignation of Interior Minister Ryszard Kalisz but fired his deputy over a series of corruption scandals involving the police. Deputy Interior Minister Andrzej Brachmanski, in charge of the police force, was sacked two days after Kalisz tendered his resignation to the prime minister after the Gazeta Wyborcza daily had revealed that high-ranking officials at police headquarters had links with organised crime rings specialising in the theft of heavy goods vehicles.
The scandal came soon after an announcement made last week by minister Kalisz that the heads of the criminal police departments in the central city of Lodz and the western city of Poznan had been sacked over incidents involving corruption and allegations of criminal dealings. In Lodz, dozens of kilos (pounds) of confiscated heroin and cocaine being held at a police depot had mysteriously vanished and been replaced with harmless white powder, while in Poznan, police chiefs were accused of "trafficking confidential information" to criminal gangs.
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