/ 17 May 2007

Polish premier’s mum holds the purse strings

Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski revealed on Thursday that he doesn’t have a bank account and instead hands his salary over to his mother.

“I still don’t have a bank account,” the 57-year-old conservative premier said in an interview with the weekly news magazine, Wprost.

“I’m not joking. I keep my money in Mum’s account,” he said.

Kaczynski is unmarried and lives with his mother in Warsaw.

His identical twin, Lech Kaczynski, is president of Poland.

Their mother, Jadwiga Kaczynska, has previously said that Lech, who is married, telephones her twice a day.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski told Wprost that he had chosen not to open a bank account to avoid the risk that anyone trying to manufacture a scandal might transfer funds into it and then try to discredit him.

The Kaczynski brothers, who founded Poland’s Law and Justice party, won the country’s presidential and parliamentary elections in 2005 after campaigning on an anti-corruption platform. — AFP