Zbigniew Tadeusz Ziobro ; born August 18, 1970) is a Polish politician. He is the current Minister of Justice of the Republic of Poland, as of January 2019, serving in the Cabinet of Mateusz Morawiecki. He previously served in the same role from October 2005 to November 2007, simultaneously serving as Public Prosecutor General. He was elected to the Sejm on September 25, 2005 in the 13th Kraków district, running on the Law and Justice list. He received over 120,000 votes in the parliamentary election, the highest percentage constituency result on a nationwide scale. Ziobro graduated from the Faculty of Law and Administration of Jagiellonian University. He did not complete his PhD. He was a member of the Sejm from 2001 to 2005. Due to his proclaimed "battle against corruption", he became one of the more popular, but also polarizing, politicians in Poland. His uncompromising approach and publicized prosecutions earned him the title Man of the year 2006, awarded by Wprost magazine. However, some of his policies were repeatedly characterized as partisan and overzealous by local and international press, including The Economist. In 2007, former Minister of Internal Affairs and AdministrationJanusz Kaczmarek, allegedly linked to the Andrzej Lepper bribery case, was forced to resign. He subsequently made a series of attack on members of the government, especially Ziobro. In a media confrontation with vice-PM Andrzej Lepper, Ziobro revealed that he had secretly recorded a conversation with Lepper. In the elections to the European Parliament in 2009, he was elected in the Kraków constituency as an MEP. He received 335 933 votes, representing the second highest score in the country. Since November 16, 2015, Ziobro has been the Justice Minister of Poland in the cabinet of Beata Szydło. In February 2016 he became Prosecutor General as well, which is result of new law unifying both positions. On August 20, 2019, Ziobro's deputy Łukasz Piebiak resigned following allegations of "arranging and controlling" an online and offlinesmear campaign against judges critical of the government's efforts to put more political control over the judiciary. In private correspondence revealed by Onet.pl Piebiak claimed to be reporting his actions to an unnamed "boss".
