[drra]

So these trains are exclusively used in Poland by quite a big number of regional train companies. There are 5 servicing levels starting from P1 up to most complex P5. It used to be that only these major companies would do P3+ but since a few years tenders were won by several smaller competitors at much lower prices all thanks to European Union Agency For Railways that opened that market.

It started with 4 trains that were serviced by SPS Mieczkowski and just wouldn't start. The company was forced to pay €0.5m in penalties and trains were sent back to Newag. At the same time several other trains from different companies that didn't even got to service but spent a bit too much time in one place became immobilized. This all led to SPS Mieczkowski hiring Dragon Sector to investigate and they found several separate routines to disable trains.

This case is investigated by Central Anti-Corruption Bureau in Poland but I doubt it'll do much harm to Newag. The Office of Rail Transport of Poland that would spam rail company with complaints and orders for a small mistake in train schedule washed it's hands from intervening in this case and train purchases have highly regulated tender process and very little wiggle room for rail companies.

[KptMarchewa]

>This case is investigated by Central Anti-Corruption Bureau in Poland but I doubt it'll do much harm to Newag. The Office of Rail Transport of Poland that would spam rail company with complaints and orders for a small mistake in train schedule washed it's hands from intervening in this case and train purchases have highly regulated tender process and very little wiggle room for rail companies.

It's clearly a crime of sabotage under Art. 254a kk. Tender process does not matter in this case. We just need a competent prosecutor.

https://sip.lex.pl/akty-prawne/dzu-dziennik-ustaw/kodeks-kar...

[bitcharmer]

Being a 40+ year old Pole I am yet to see a single case of corruption in public sector be prosecuted.

[ajuc]

Maciej Zalewski (a co-creator of Kaczyński's first party - Porozumienie Centrum) remains the only high-level politician I know of in Poland that was sentenced for corruption and actually went to jail.

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Zalewski_(filolog)

He warned Bagsik and co. (who stole millions of public money through the famous Art-B company and escaped to Israel) that the police wants to imprison them - so they managed to escape. Bagsik later confirmed that they shared some of that money with Porozumienie Centrum's business named Telegraf. Somehow only the less important guy (Zalewski) went to jail, but Kaczyński brothers weren't prosecuted.

But there's a lot of low level corruption that is exposed, it's just usually ignored by country-wide media, because that corruption is local. For one example: https://samorzad.pap.pl/kategoria/prawo/prawomocny-wyrok-byl...

[matkoniecz]

> but Kaczyński brothers weren't prosecuted.

Is there any indicator they should have been in this case?

[ajuc]

Their company "Telegraf" got cheap credit from Bagsik just before.

[KptMarchewa]

I haven't seen any evidence of corruption here - just pure malice and monopolistic behavior.

[ska]

There is corruption everywhere (though obviously not uniformly distributed). It requires active, dynamic efforts to counteract. If you don't see some evidence of successful prosecution, that itself is informative.

[_hcuq]

The corruption would be if this is not punished. By for example Newag getting a massive fine.

[KptMarchewa]

It's a criminal case. Money is not enough.

[jnsaff2]

I think that there are two separate issues here:

1. train manufacturer bricking trains - malice and monopolism as you say

2. prosecutors failing to bring court cases and convictions for train manufacturers - incompetence or more likely corruption.

[6510]

It might be different if you manage to get your competitor fined 500k

[KptMarchewa]

500k is fraction of train cost. Eventual fine, to work properly, would need to be in hundreds of millions.

[account42]

I think the 500k was a reference to the fine the third-party service company (SPS Mieczkowski) had to pay due to the failure that it now turns out was intentionally caused by Newag.

[TomaszZielinski]

Having read only that kk article, I'm not certain if trains are considered parts of the infrastructure?

[KptMarchewa]

It works for train vandalism - why wouldn't it work on industrial scale?

For example, someone stole active train parts: https://orzeczenia.gdansk-poludnie.sr.gov.pl/content/$N/1510...

[TomaszZielinski]

I don't know, that's why I asked--for me "infrastructure" sounds like the immovable parts. Similarly to road infrastructure, which doesn't include cars. But it's just my armchair impression, I have no idea how the law works in this context.

I quickly scanned the sentence you linked to, and art. 254a seems to be applied only to the theft of wires from tracks? Or am I missing something?

I've tried googling "infrastruktura kolejowa", and it seems that Ustawa o transporcie kolejowym defines it in art. 4.1, referencing Appendix 1. And that Appendix only lists immovable stuff. But again, I'm not a lawyer and I'm aware that definitions from one act often don't apply to a different act, in different branch of law.

[myself248]

In the usage I'm familiar with (in the US), the entire rail network is considered "transportation infrastructure", from a national perspective.

But from the perspective of just the rail network, the track and other infrastructure is considered separate from the rolling stock.

I wonder: If the rolling stock becomes immobilized, does it now count as immovable stuff?

[reactordev]

If that were true, Amtrak wouldn't be leasing railways as it's nationally run. Railroad companies like Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, CSX, own their rails. They own their rolling stock. They own their locomotives. They lend you, the business person, a rolling stock to load and ship to where you need it to go. There it will be unloaded and sold/shipped by truck to final destination.

Rail companies own the right-of-way AND the rails. They control what runs on their rails, who runs on their rails, when they run, etc.

It's quite something to think that 97% of the rail tracks in the USA are privately owned.

https://public.railinc.com/about-railinc/blog/who-owns-railr...

[TomaszZielinski]

Ah, that's a very good distinction between the national perspective and the rail perspective!

> I wonder: If the rolling stock becomes immobilized, does it now count as immovable stuff?

Assuming it's a philosophical question, and not a legal one, how about: - A runner that's currently running is obviously a runner - A runner that finished running for today is still a runner - A runner with serious knee problems is a former runner ?

[comex]

Reminds me of the recent Supreme Court case about whether a train is "in use" while parked at a railyard:

https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/03/justices-search-for-the-l...

[pixel8account]

It is also investigated by the Agency of Internal Security and I really doubt they don't have huge problems out of this. This is taken extremely seriously internally.

There's a ton of evidence to prove what happened and they have no chance to somehow wiggle out of this. They're trying... by saying they were hacked. Yeah, the hackers somehow flashed firmware of trains services by competition, to brick the trains. GPS coordinates of competition rail segments were literally hardcoded.

[opliko]

Their newer variant, Impuls 2, is actually used outside of Poland too - Italian FSE operates 11 of them.

Though considering they were hoping to continue their expansion into Italy I imagine they might not have sabotaged these trains (but who knows, maybe they're fine with burning even new customers).