Polish authorities are investigating whether previously unknown documents from Poland’s communist era that suggest Nobel laureate Lech Walesa was a collaborator are in fact genuine.
Rumors of collaboration have long dogged Walesa, who, as a shipyard worker in the 1970s, helped give rise to the Solidarity protest movement, and later became Poland’s first post-communist president.
Poland's main historical institute last week seized documents from the home of the last communist-era interior minister, under a law requiring key historical papers to be handed in.
Some of those papers included money receipts under a code name "Bolek," alleged to be Walesa’s.
Walesa, however, has insisted that the receipts must be forgeries, faked by the secret police.
Lukasz Kaminski, head of the IPN communist crimes prosecutors, said on February 25 officials were now investigating the claim, “because it could qualify as an offense under the criminal code.”
