Recording 7 — 30 September 2021: the mechanism of Witold's destruction
Recording from 30 September 2021 (11:49) — NN explains what the mechanism of Dr. Witold Kilarski's destruction by NCN Director Zbigniew Błocki and Prof. Marcin Drąg may have been. It is a late, summarising view from NN — already a former NCN employee — covering the whole process: from the 29 May 2020 ultimatum to Kilarski's exclusion from academia.
NN reconstructs specific steps: Drąg's influence on NCN decisions, Błocki's use of his position to close off grant access to independent voices, and the role of procedural reprisals (courts, civil lawsuits, verdicts). It is one of the most important summaries of the case delivered by someone who was inside the apparatus.
A. How NCN's Director knew about the NAWA application
The recording's central thesis: as a partner institution to the NAWA "Polish Returns" programme, NCN received the full lists of applicants. NN reveals this to Dr. Kilarski only in this conversation — which explains how Błocki could have known the applicant's identity from the outset.
"He was formally informed because we are a [funding] component — we received the entire list of people submitting [applications]."
B. "Appease" — NN's reconstruction of the withdrawal demand
NN sets out her own reconstruction of Błocki's motivation: the NCN Director — by her account — had no direct order from Prof. Drąg, but, "afraid that the situation might surface and damage NCN's reputation", devised on his own that he would "appease" Drąg by getting Dr. Kilarski to withdraw the application. According to NN, the word "appease" came directly from Błocki.
"He said this to me — that this would be something that would appease [Drąg]."
C. Manipulating the NAWA score threshold — from 25 to 86.5
NN tells Dr. Kilarski that the chair of the NAWA panel had been told the applicant "is not to receive [funding]". When it turned out that Dr. Kilarski had ranked highly (14th on the list), the score threshold required for funding was — by NN's account — artificially raised from 25 to 86.5 points.
"With Grochala […] as panel chair, he told him: 'listen, this guy is not to get it'. […] So he came up with [the idea] that the threshold would now be 86 points."
"86.5 — not 25, the way it was a year ago."
D. The reason for removing NN from NCN
NN explains that the NCN Director — as she heard from him — justified the need to remove her from the position of head of grants control by invoking the defence of "NCN's good name". The conflict with Prof. Drąg became — in NN's view — an instrumental pretext; the real reason, she suggests, was her earlier audit work, including the discovery of 14 identical (copy-paste) reviews within a single grant programme.
"He was defending — as he himself put it — the good name of NCN, so he had to dismiss me ideally, or do something with me, because it cannot be that I would stay in this post and simply not be punished."
E. Systemic irregularities at NCN — work-for-hire contracts and the anti-plagiarism programme
NN describes specific practices that, in her view, amount to financial misconduct at NCN: work-for-hire contracts concluded for publications that already existed on the day the contract was signed (in one case, for 70,000 PLN); a change of interpretation after Błocki took office (now allowing the assumption of an "oral agreement"); and the fate of the anti-plagiarism programme that NN had purchased for NCN, which after a year was reportedly judged "unnecessary" and removed from the institution's infrastructure.
F. NN does not want to give testimony — a personal limit
Pressed by Dr. Kilarski, NN explains why she does not want to testify in court. She does not contest the findings, but draws a personal line: she prefers to "walk away" from people and situations that affect her negatively, rather than to fight. She also draws a temporal line — "Błocki will stop being director in two years". On the recording, Dr. Kilarski does not accept this passive stance and announces a "frontal attack" as, in his view, the only available form of defence.