„Afera kurierska” w wywiadzie i MSZ

In the early sixties, the civilian intelligence of Polish People’s Republic was shocked by the so-called courier scandal. In January 1962, while trying to expose the community of foreign currency dealers in Łódź, officers from the Citizens’ Militia headquarters in this city found that one of the persons involved in illegal practices was a former courier of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former intelligence officer. In the course of the investigation carried out by the Bureau of Investigation and the First Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it turned out that almost all couriers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, some of whom were undercover intelligence officers, were engaged in smuggling. Until mid-February, 43 people were arrested and several others were released pending trial. The practices revealed consisted in packaging courier mail in double envelopes between which dollar bills were transported outside the country. After crossing the border, couriers tore off the outer envelopes and took out dollars. They usually used the money to buy gold twenty-dollar coins and smuggled them into the country in double bags for diplomatic mail. Then, they sold the coins with a large profit on the black market. This way, during the period from 1959 to January 1962, suspects illegally transferred about 225,000 dollars abroad. At the same time, they brought back into the country about 4,500 gold twenty-dollar coins, which is about 210 kg of gold. They also transferred other scarce goods into the country in the same way. The investigation showed that the malpractice in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the intelligence service went beyond the operations described. It was revealed that employees of diplomatic posts, including ambassadors, imported many valuable and scarce goods into the country without any control and without paying customs duties. Among others, almost all employees of the Polish People’s Republic’s Delegation in Tel Aviv were involved in the shady trade practices, including the local minister plenipotentiary. The scale of malpractices revealed turned out to be very large and threatened many high-ranking people. However, these cases were not investigated any further. The authorities limited themselves to punishing the couriers and their accomplices. In some cases, the punishments were purely symbolic.