Polish prosecutors have indicted two former senior executives of Alior Bank’s brokerage operation over the distribution of investment-fund certificates purchased by 1,308 customers for more than PLN 387.6 million — approximately $99 million or €89 million.
The Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Łódź said on 14 October that the indictment accuses the two former managers of fraud connected with the bank’s distribution of certificates issued by four closed-end investment funds.
The PLN 387.6 million figure is not the amount ultimately lost by investors.
Prosecutors estimate customers’ actual combined losses at approximately PLN 136 million — about $35 million or €31 million after investors recovered part of the money placed in the funds.
Both defendants deny the allegations. No finding of criminal guilt has been made.
Former Alior managers identify themselves
The prosecutor’s original announcement did not name the bank or defendants.
However, subsequent reporting identified the distributor as Alior Bank, and the defendants themselves publicly confirmed their identities as Krzysztof Polak and Marcin Mierzwa.
In a statement reported by Puls Biznesu on Wednesday, the two former managers said they reject the prosecution’s case and expect to be acquitted.
Historical Alior material describes Polak as the executive responsible for establishing and leading the bank’s brokerage operation.
Mierzwa served as deputy director. An archived Alior Bank profile from 2015 says his responsibilities included the bank’s investment-fund offering.
The indictment is against the two former executives, not Alior Bank as a corporate defendant.
Prosecutors allege inadequate examination of the products
According to prosecutors, between 2012 and 2015 the two managers signed agreements under which the bank entered into distribution arrangements for certificates issued by four investment funds.
The prosecution alleges that this happened without adequate examination of the products, including verification of information contained in promotional materials, the funds’ investment policies and their underlying assets.
Investigators also allege that the managers knew about what prosecutors describe as limited experience and weak business credibility among people managing the funds.
The prosecution’s case is that customers regarded the involvement of a bank as providing additional assurance that the investments had been properly scrutinised.
Whether the former managers had a legal duty to carry out the level of verification alleged by prosecutors is expected to be one of the central issues at trial.
Polak and Mierzwa dispute that premise. In their public response, they argue that the distribution complied with the law and standards applicable to distributors at the time and that the indictment misinterprets the legal responsibilities of an investment-product distributor.
The four funds were linked to W Investments
The case concerns four closed-end funds associated with the W Investments business:
WI Inwestycje Rolne FIZAN, WI Inwestycje Selektywne FIZAN, WI Vivante FIZAN and WI Lasy Polskie FIZAN.
Historical regulatory records confirm that Alior Bank was among the institutions distributing certificates in those funds.
The funds were administered by FinCrea TFI, while investment-management activities were connected with entities in the W Investments group.
That division of responsibilities is important because the criminal case raises a broader question about the boundary between responsibility for creating and managing an investment product and responsibility for deciding to distribute it to customers.
The two former Alior managers argue that prosecutors are seeking to hold the distributor responsible for matters that were controlled by the entities managing the funds. Prosecutors take the position that the bank’s decision-makers failed adequately to examine products before making them available to customers.
Those competing interpretations have not yet been resolved by a court.
Prosecutors allege a pyramid-like liquidity mechanism
The most serious part of the prosecution’s description concerns the way investors could exit during the period when the funds were building their portfolios.
According to the Łódź prosecutor’s account of the indictment, customers were allegedly not informed that money used for certificate redemptions could depend on continued sales to new investors rather than profits generated by the funds’ investments.
Prosecutors say this resembled mechanisms associated with a financial pyramid.
That characterisation is an allegation in the prosecution case, not an established judicial finding.
The indictment alleges that when banks stopped selling the certificates in May 2016, the flow of new money ended and the four funds subsequently encountered severe liquidity problems.
KNF intervened in 2017
Poland’s Financial Supervision Authority, KNF, later took regulatory action against FinCrea TFI.
In November 2017, the KNF revoked FinCrea’s authorisation and imposed a PLN 5 million penalty after finding serious failures of supervision relating to the four funds.
The regulator specifically identified Inwestycje Rolne, Inwestycje Selektywne, Vivante and Lasy Polskie in its decision.
Liquidation of the funds continued for years.
The prosecutor’s office says the final liquidation process ended only in August 2025.
Customers who had bought certificates through the bank recovered part of their invested capital, but prosecutors calculate the remaining loss among the 1,308 customers covered by this indictment at around PLN 136 million.
PLN 387.6m and PLN 136m measure different things
The distinction between the two headline amounts is essential.
The PLN 387.6 million figure represents the value connected with certificates purchased by the customers included in the prosecution case.
The PLN 136 million figure is the prosecutors’ estimate of the customers’ eventual financial loss after partial recoveries from the funds.
Using the National Bank of Poland’s average exchange rates for 14 October 2026, those sums are approximately:
PLN 387.6 million — $99 million / €89 million
PLN 136 million — $35 million / €31 million
Neither amount should be described as a fine imposed on the defendants or as money already ordered to be repaid by a court.
Defendants challenge the prosecution’s theory
Polak and Mierzwa have issued a detailed defence of their conduct.
They say they acted within the law and argue that the prosecution has misunderstood the obligations of a distributor of investment certificates.
They also maintain that investigators have focused on them despite the fact that other people were responsible for management of the funds’ underlying assets.
Their statement says they provided extensive explanations during the investigation and relied on legal opinions that, in their view, support their position.
They also point out that they had themselves reported suspected wrongdoing involving people connected with management of the funds.
The defendants describe the indictment as an attempt to find a substitute target for responsibility and say they expect the court proceedings to establish their innocence. These remain the defendants’ claims and have not been tested at trial.
Case could clarify responsibilities of investment distributors
For Poland’s financial industry, the significance of the proceedings goes beyond the losses alleged in this particular case.
Banks and brokerage firms frequently distribute investment products created and managed by separate fund managers or investment companies.
The criminal case could therefore test how far senior executives at a distributor are expected to investigate the economic substance, management and underlying assets of products before approving them for sale.
That question is separate from whether an investment later performs badly.
The allegation here is that the products should not have been distributed in the manner alleged without further verification and that customers were misled about material characteristics of their investment.
The defence position is that those obligations did not extend as far as prosecutors now argue.
Longer regulatory and civil history
The W Investments case has already generated years of regulatory and civil litigation.
KNF previously investigated Alior Bank’s role in distribution of the same funds and in 2019 imposed penalties connected with breaches of investment-services rules. Those administrative proceedings subsequently became the subject of court challenges.
Individual investors have also brought civil cases against Alior Bank concerning losses on W Investments certificates.
Those proceedings involve different legal tests from the new criminal indictment and should not be treated as determining the guilt of Polak or Mierzwa.
The current indictment is itself described by prosecutors as arising from one strand of a wider investigation, meaning it should not be treated as a complete resolution of all conduct surrounding the four funds.
Assets worth PLN 8.6m secured
During the investigation, prosecutors secured property belonging to the defendants with an estimated value of approximately PLN 8.6 million, primarily involving real estate.
That is roughly $2.2 million or €2 million at current NBP rates.
Asset security in criminal proceedings is intended to preserve property that may potentially be available to satisfy future financial orders if a court ultimately imposes them.
It does not itself establish guilt.
Trial is the next stage
The prosecution says its evidence runs to 1,781 volumes of case files and 14 binders of annexes, including documents, witness testimony, explanations and expert opinions.
The indictment and supporting material have now been sent to court.
The alleged offences carry potential prison terms of up to ten years.
No trial verdict has been issued, and both defendants have pleaded not guilty during the investigation and publicly reject the allegations.
For investors and the wider financial industry, the case will now turn on a question with implications beyond W Investments itself: how much responsibility a bank and its senior brokerage managers bear for examining an investment product created and managed by outside parties before allowing it to be sold through the bank’s distribution network.
