Poland's Law: Paying Back Money Instead of Criminal Prosecution

Ok thought someone here may know something about this. Recently it was discovered that a number of people were caught stealing on very organized basis products from a local company where I work.. This was a very organized operation and we are talking about thousands of pln, not just a biro here and there. My initial thought was that the would end up in prison and rightly so as this has been going on for years apparently. However 2 months on and despite a Police raid discovering thousands of stolen product in their homes and a book listing the orders for this stolen product they still are free without a care in the world.

The rumour mill told me that they have been ordered to pay back 185000 pln and if they do so the whole thing will be forgotten. How does this work I would have thought that if they committed a criminal offence they should pay a criminal penalty but what do I know about the law here can anyone shed some light on this for me?

It all depends on who their friends are and what political party they belong to. Also maybe the workplace does not want to broadcast to the whole world how lax their internal controls are. The workplace should have known within a month and not allowed this to continue. Courts have more important cases to resolve, as long as they pay for the stolen goods - they will have a clean record.

There was a similar situation a few years ago at my workplace... a member of office staff had been stealing (using pass key to get into locked offices and taking money from purses).

A trap was set, this person fell into it but... not much happened besides them not working there anymore. I heard rumors that the person had 'protection' from above and there was an agreement to pay back some money in exhange for dropping it but then... the documents they'd used to get the job were fake... and then someone saw them in town and wanted to call police and they weren't interested...