Gabriel Czechowicz

Gabriel Czechowicz (1876-1938) was a Polish lawyer, economist and politician. He was the Polish Treasury Minister from 1926 to 1929. Accused of misuse of government funds, Czechowicz was the only Polish politician of the interwar period that faced the State Tribunal of the Republic of Poland in the so-called Czechowicz Case. The case was dropped without ruling due to pressure from the Sanacja regime.

Gabriel Czechowicz was born on October 2, 1876 in his family real estate near Minsk, Russian Empire, in a noble family. He graduated from Law Faculty at Saint Petersburg State University, after which took a job in a bank at Riga. In 1905, he began working for the local Russian tax chamber. In 1917, the chamber was evacuated to Tartu, and in 1918, Czechowicz returned to newly restored Poland. In 1919, he was employed by the Treasury Office of Civilian Government of the Eastern Territories. He then was manager of tax chamber in Brzesc nad Bugiem. Transferred to Warsaw, in 1925 he was named manager of Department of Taxes and the State Treasury.

In December 1922, Czechowicz, under the pseudonym Leliwa, wrote a book “The Project of Improvement of Polish Treasury”. The publication criticized the government of Poland, and the author stated that the newly recreated country lacked cohesive tax regulations, and a well-thought out plan of changes. Taxes were collected slowly and inefficiently, and as a result the treasury lost a lot of revenue. Furthermore, there were too many different taxes, and the tax office was too decentralized. Since civil servants earned too little, corruption among them was rampant. Czechowicz had several ideas. He wanted to keep only income tax, and to attach Polish currency to the “perfect gold”.

In 1926, already a high-ranking official of the State Treasury, Czechowicz, again as Leliwa, wrote another book: “The Treasury Problem in the Light of Truth”. He analyzed the works of two ministers of treasury, Wladyslaw Grabski and Jerzy Zdziechowski, criticizing the introduction of the Polish zloty, which replaced the Polish marka.

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