Oligarchs are wealthy because they have friends in high places who arrange for them to be wealthy, and these arrangements can be perfectly legal. In fact, contrary to popular belief, corruption is not necessarily the means by which modern oligarchs acquire wealth and property, if corruption is defined as actually breaking the law. But they didn’t have that specific combination of characteristics that we have come to recognize as typical of the very wealthiest Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, or Chinese. Of course the country had some very rich people, including a number who got rich through corruption or deception.

Until very recently, Poland didn’t have oligarchs. Obajtek is an oligarch, and in the hybrid democratic-autocratic political systems now emerging around the world, many newly minted oligarchs make their money at an extraordinary pace. He says he acquired this real-estate empire legally, but the speed with which he did so has raised eyebrows, though it probably should not have. His personal wealth recently became a major news story in Poland (at least among independent, nongovernment media) because it now includes, among other assets, 38 properties, including houses, apartments, parcels of land, even a seaside pensjonat.įrom the October 2018 issue: A warning from Europe: The worst is yet to come Obajtek was the choice of the current ruling party, the Law and Justice party, and he has done well out of this decision. It is also, in practice, a state company: Although traded on the stock exchange, its largest shareholder is the Polish state treasury, which means that the Polish government gets to name its CEO. Orlen runs oil refineries and gas stations in multiple countries, owns a range of energy assets, and is listed on the Fortune 500. Today, Obajtek is the chief executive officer of PKN Orlen, the largest company in central Europe. In Polish, the term for the job he held is wójt, an old-fashioned word that means something like “village headman.” It signifies that you run something very small.

“County commissioner” is perhaps a grand-sounding title, but I can’t find a better one. In 2015, Daniel Obajtek was the county commissioner of Pcim, a tiny district south of Kraków and north of the Polish-Slovak border.

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