Adam Glapiński once again managed to amaze observers of public life. On December 7, the NBP announced that “Mr. Jacek Kurski has started working as Deputy Executive Director of the Swiss-Polish Constituent Assembly at the World Bank Group in Washington.” This post requires clarification. The President of the National Bank of Poland has appointed the former director of TVP Deputy Executive Director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), i.e. the part of the World Bank whose mission is , among other things, to grant long-term preferential loans to countries in need (Poland used them in the 1990s). The IBOiR Board of Directors is made up of 25 Executive Directors who represent the Member States of the World Bank or groups of these States, the so-called Constituent Assembly. The Polish-Swiss Constituent Assembly includes Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and its executive director is Swiss Dominique Favre. Kurski will be his replacement.

There is no indication that substantive considerations were decisive for the candidacy. Kurski’s resume consists of journalism (long ago), politics, and a combination of politics and propaganda (recently). Her predecessor in the structures of the World Bank – Katarzyna Zajdel-Kurowska – at the time of the appointment in 2018, had worked, among other things, in the Ministry of Finance (including the post of Deputy Minister), in the bank private sector (chief economist at Citibank Handlowy), the International Monetary Fund and the board of directors of the National Bank of Poland. Kurski visited other institutions, such as the Polish Reconstruction Movement, ZChN, PiS, LPR and Solidarna Polska.

So what, if not your qualifications, made you decide to suddenly embark on a career in banking? When he was removed from his position as head of TVP in September, he tried to enter politics directly. He negotiated with Jarosław Kaczyński – he demanded the post of minister of digitization, the post of election campaign strategist and a place on the electoral list; some interlocutors even add that Kurski demanded the Prime Minister’s resignation.