Jan Krzysztof Bielecki

Jan Krzysztof Bielecki (born 3 May 1951) is a Polish liberal politician and economist.

Born in Bydgoszcz on 3 May 1951, Bielecki studied sea transport economics at the University of Gdańsk, graduating in 1973.

For much of the latter half of the 1970s, Bielecki was employed as an economist at the Center of Heavy Industry, an applied economic research institute in Gdańsk.

In 1980, Bielecki joined the Solidarity movement, taking an active role in the movement by providing it with logistical support.

Remaining outside of the state sector while also continuing underground support for Solidarity, Bielecki, along with other like-minded colleagues from the University of Gdańsk (Uniwersytet Gdański), sought to take advantage of new economic reforms instituted by the communist government in the mid-1980s.

These reforms replaced the direct administration of state enterprises with written regulations for managers.

Realizing that the reform laws had large loopholes in financial and tax oversight, the situation could be taken advantage of by private consulting firms, which could advise state enterprises to avoid various regulations.

Bielecki created the Doradca cooperative (doradca, meaning 'advisor') with virtually no capital or financial sources, with himself as "chief of operations" and one secretary as a coworker.

Using academic and personal connections from the University of Gdańsk, Bielecki established working relationships with Polish Ocean Lines and other state enterprises.

As few consultancy bodies existed in the communist People's Republic of Poland (PRL), Bielecki's academic and personal connections with sympathetic university professors and alumni were crucial in obtaining work at the time.

Bielecki's cooperative quickly received work in tax consultancy.

The opaque and often vague tax codes issued by the communist government confused state enterprise managers, who relied on Doradca to assist them in limiting their tax returns.

The cooperative, using the many loopholes that existed in the tax code, gained expertise in raising individual salaries at state firms without raising tax liabilities.

As martial law was declared in December 1981 to crush dissidents, Bielecki was arrested and briefly detained by authorities.

Recognized for his role in Solidarity, Bielecki was fired from the Center of Heavy Industry and blacklisted from state employment.

After eight months of unemployment, Bielecki found a job as a truck driver for an agricultural cooperative, while also secretly remained active in Solidarity by publishing pamphlets and monitoring clandestine police activities for the movement.

In 1987, Bielecki organized his employees to create software simulating various strategies on wage tax liabilities.

The software became immensely popular with Poland's largest enterprises, who quickly purchased copies.

By 1988, the government eased prohibitions on Western firms making joint ventures with Polish enterprises.

With few consultancy firms in place, and fewer English-speaking Poles conversant in Western financial analysis, Doradca was well-placed to assist these new firms with Poland's tax and banking regulations.

At the same time, Doradca, through the efforts of Bielecki, continued to assist in recruiting and employing underground Solidarity members.

During that time, Bielecki was given the nickname "Little Black" (małe czarne) among Solidarity activists, supporters and trade unionists.

In the waning days of the communist state, Bielecki, along with fellow Gdańsk liberals Janusz Lewandowski, Donald Tusk and Jacek Merkel, founded the Gdańsk Society for Socio-Economic Development, an informal organization of intellectual liberal dissidents, who became known as the "Congress Liberals."

In the partially free 1989 parliamentary elections, Bielecki was elected to the Sejm as a member of the Solidarity Citizens' Committee.

A leading figure of the Gdańsk-based Liberal Democratic Congress in the early 1990s, Bielecki served as Prime Minister of Poland for most of 1991.

During the splintering of the Solidarity Citizens' Movement throughout 1990, Bielecki and other Gdańsk intellectuals increasingly favoured a liberal approach to reform the Polish economy.

Congress Liberal members, including Bielecki, voted to create the Liberal Democratic Congress (KLD) in June 1990 in order to contest parliamentary elections.

The new party advocated pragmatic liberalism, privatization, the expansion of Poland's newly free market, and European integration.

The party, along with Bielecki, also supported Lech Wałęsa in the 1990 presidential election.

Following the resignation of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki in November 1990 after his resounding defeat in the presidential election, newly elected President Lech Wałęsa sought a new prime minister.

Originally, the president appointed lawyer and former activist Jan Olszewski to the office of Prime Minister, though Olszewski quickly refused the position after numerous disagreements with Wałęsa over conditions the president placed on the prime minister's cabinet.

Wałęsa turned instead to Bielecki to form a new government.

Bielecki was little-known at the time within political circles.

Bielecki accepted Wałęsa's proposals to the cabinet, keeping five ministers from the previous Mazowiecki government, including Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Leszek Balcerowicz, who would continue to institute the shock therapy Balcerowicz Plan to the Polish economy.

Bielecki then crafted a coalition government between his Liberal Democratic Congress and other parties who supported Lech Wałęsa, including the Centre Agreement, the Democratic Party and the Christian National Union.

Since the early 2000s, Bielecki has been a member of the Civic Platform party.

In his post-political career, Bielecki served as president of Bank Pekao between 2003 and 2010, and served as the president of the Polish Institute of International Affairs between 2009 and 2015.

During a forum held at the London School of Economics in 2009, Bielecki described the difficulty many fellow Solidarity activists faced during the early 1980s.

"After martial law, a lot of people—colleagues of mine—were [on] their knees or in a regular prison. Unfortunately, 70 percent of them decided to leave the country because they thought, 'The fight is over. It's the end. There is no chance for the future.' And we tried in a hopeless way to stay in the country, in my personal view, mostly not to give up and to fight for pride."

In 2010, the Warsaw Business Journal described Bielecki as one of the most respected economists in Poland.