Just this morning in Kraków the driver of a Finnish tour bus traveling from Budapest was forced to pay a €500 bribe to police, a Finnish travel agency has told WBJ. And this wasn't the first time.

Arja Schobesberger, the director of bus tours for Finnish travel agency Aurinkomatkat, said her firm's buses were often forced to pay bribes in Poland.

“We've had five buses stopped in different cases. Yesterday, one was stopped just an hour and a half from Warsaw,” she said.

According to Ms Schobesberger, that bus was traveling to Hungary when it was stopped by police officers, who upon checking the driver's documents said they found a mistake. They were unable to specify the exact mistake but demanded €2,400, she said.

Ms Schobesberger said her drivers were scrupulously checked before they left Finland, and expressed her certainty that the police didn't find anything wrong with the documents.

“But the customers were on a long bus trip and they were tired. [The driver] didn't have any choice but to pay,” Ms Schobesberger said, adding that the police officers had been extremely pushy.

“The driver only had €1,000. It was not possible to pay by credit card or any other means. And police only wanted money in Polish złoty,” she said.

According to the driver's account, he made arrangements to meet with other drivers in order to pool the cash, but while they waited the police suggested passengers should come up with the money between them.

“But the passengers said this amounted to robbery and they didn't want take part. They would not had given the money, even if they had had it,” Ms Schobesberger said.

“When the other drivers came, they had the money, but the police didn't want [euros]. They had to go to a cash exchange and change the money. Then the police didn't give a receipt or anything.”

Ms Schobesberger said only two of her firm's buses traveling though Poland haven't yet encountered similar problems.

“This is definitely not legal,” Ms Shobesberger said. “We have obeyed the law in every single detail. And we are very upset. The police just wanted to make some fast money.”

WBJ contacted the Polish police, who declined to comment for this article.

Victoria Ziarkowski