Licensed legal counsel (radca prawny; Warsaw Bar of Legal Counsels, registration no. WA-9026). Founder and Managing Partner of Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec — a boutique advisory firm with over twenty years of experience in tax law, corporate structures, and cross-border advisory.
Clausewitz wrote that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Law is the continuation of interests by other means — and like any continuation, it requires someone who understands both the objective and the instrument. For over twenty years, I have stood at that intersection: between the entrepreneur’s interest and the apparatus of the state, between a corporate structure and its tax consequence, between what the client wants to achieve and what the system permits, prohibits, or pretends not to see.
I advise entrepreneurs from over a dozen countries. Some of them appear on the Forbes list. Some come to me because the tax authority has just seized their account and frozen the business they spent twenty years building. What unites them is the same thing: they need someone unafraid of complicated cases — and someone who understands that behind every tax structure stands a person, their family, and everything they have built.
I specialize in tax disputes with fiscal authorities, international tax planning, crypto-asset regulation, and asset protection.
Why I write
Colbert, finance minister to Louis XIV, used to say that the art of taxation consists of plucking the goose so as to obtain the most feathers with the least hissing. The modern fiscal apparatus sometimes forgets the second part of that formula. Someone needs to remind it — and to explain to entrepreneurs what is changing, why it is changing, and what to do about it before the change reaches them.
That is why I write. I publish regularly in Rzeczpospolita, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, and Forbes Poland. Kancelaria Skarbiec produces over one hundred expert articles per year, in Polish and English — from CJEU rulings on VAT, through the anatomy of cryptocurrency pyramids, to the geopolitics of frozen Russian assets. This is not marketing. It is a test of whether I can explain a complicated thing clearly enough for someone who has it on their plate but is not a lawyer.
Author of AI Decoding Satoshi Nakamoto: Artificial Intelligence on the Trail of Bitcoin’s Creator — because the place where technology meets law is the last great terra incognita of jurisprudence and someone needs to start mapping it. Co-author of the award-winning book Bezpieczeństwo współczesnej firmy (Security of a Modern Company; 3rd place, Economicus Award at the Warsaw Book Fair).
The WGI case
Thucydides wrote about justice that it exists only between equals. The victims of the WGI affair — Warszawska Grupa Inwestycyjna, one of the largest investment pyramids in Polish history — were equal to no one: not to the perpetrators, and not to the system that was supposed to protect them and failed.
I have represented them since 2006. When we began, no one had heard of the iPhone, YouTube had just stopped being a startup, and the global financial crisis was still two years over the horizon. Since then, governments have changed, laws have changed, nearly everything has changed. Our determination has not. The guilty verdict has been delivered. Twenty years is scandalously long. But Fabius Cunctator, whom the Romans mocked for his delay, saved Rome — because there are things you do not leave half-done, even when the world stops believing in them.
Recognition
Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec holds top positions in the tax law firm rankings of Dziennik Gazeta Prawna — recognized as one of the best tax advisory firms in Poland in 2023 and 2024.
Recipient of the title International Tax Planning Law Firm of the Year in Poland (The Lawyer International Global Awards). Four-time laureate of the European Medal (2015–2018) — an award conferred jointly by the Business Centre Club and the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels, recognizing, among other things, the management of international holding structures and representation of entrepreneurs during customs and fiscal audits. Recipient of the Diamond to the Golden Statuette of the Polish Business Leader (Business Centre Club).
What I do
Tax disputes with fiscal authorities. Tax audits, customs and fiscal audits, assessment proceedings, recovery of withheld VAT refunds, appeals to administrative courts. Gordon Tullock explained why bureaucrats prefer to deny rather than approve — denial is safe, approval carries risk. The system rewards overzealousness and punishes its absence. My job is to ensure that this overzealousness does not become unlawfulness.
International tax planning. Cross-border structures, double tax treaties, economic substance, tax residency, CFC rules, exit tax, withholding tax, transfer pricing. Moltke taught that the objective is set by the commander; the means are chosen by the officer in the field. The client says: “I want to run a business from three jurisdictions.” I build the structure that makes it possible — in compliance with the law of each.
Crypto-asset regulation. MiCA, CASP, DAC8, AML/KYC, token structuring. I have been advising in this space since 2017 — before most law firms in Poland noticed that blockchain was more than a buzzword. New technology, but old strategic principles: whoever knows the terrain has half the victory.
Asset protection and family foundations. Sun Tzu wrote that the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. The best asset protection is the kind no one ever tests — because the structure is so solid that no one attempts to attack it. Family foundations, trusts, asset diversification, succession planning.
Corporate and holding structures. Transactional due diligence, restructurings, mergers, demergers, transformations. Every structure tailored to the case — because in corporate law, off-the-rack templates are like battle plans drawn up far from the front: they look logical on paper and do not survive contact with reality.
