Penta Investments Limited (Penta), the Central European investment group is publically appealing to Alexander Szczyglo, the chief of the BBN, to deny untrue information about the company, published in the media who have been referring to him.
In a form of the open letter, Penta also asks Szczyglo to publically present that his statements were truly not meant to interfere and influence the process of WSK PZL-Świdnik S.A. (PZL) privatization in favor of one of the competitors.
“We want to believe that Mr. Szczyglo’s statements were just misquoted, however he could even act just having untrue information, or he was consciously lying. To dilute these doubts, it is inevitable, that he will publically clarify this issue. We fully respect the BBN’s competences and authority in the area of national defense and security. However we can not accept that we have been accused by Mr. Szczyglo on serious allegations, which completely miss the truth,” Marek Dospiva, the Founding Partner of Penta said.
Penta’s reaction stems from the publications of the several Polish media, particularly the Radio RMF FM, which has been unfavorably describing the company as the Russian fund allegedly connected to the Russian secret services. It has been put into the context of PZL privatization just a day before the deadline for submittal of the final bid for PZL to ARP S.A. by Penta’s portfolio company Aero Vodochody a.s. (Aero). The media have used Alexander Szczyglo as its information source and have referred to him several times in this respect.
“The Czech Government, that is the Government of a NATO member-country and close ally of Poland in various defense initiatives, has already examined Penta’s security clearance before it approved our taking over of the biggest Czech aviation company Aero Vodochody and its defense programs. Being a reliable partner to the Czech Government, and being already examined in Poland, there is no ground for anybody to question our security clearance,” Marek Dospiva adds.
Penta strongly denies any accusations of having ever been working with the so called Russian capital for its financial or any operations and publically declares that has never been connected or cooperated with any Russian secret services organizations, nor the secret services organizations of other countries.
Due to the participation of Aero in the privatization of PZL, the security clearance of Penta and its good standing have been checked by the Polish institutions over the past 12 months of the privatization proceedings, which was confirmed explicitly by the Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of State Treasury, Mr. Zdzislaw Gawlik’s address in Sejm on 16.6.2009. During the current privatization proceedings, Penta provided the required information and even responded to additional inquiries regarding its business and capital ties. Aero’s goal to establish the Central European Aerospace Holding mainly through the partnership with PZL has been several times openly supported by the representatives of the Czech Government.