Polish populist politician Andrzej Lepper dies

Andrzej Lepper, a pig farmer-turned-firebrand populist who was briefly deputy prime minister in a shaky government and who was later disgraced by a sex scandal, has died in what police suspected to be a suicide. He was 57. Lepper's body was found in his party office in Warsaw on Friday afternoon, police said. "Everything indicates that he killed himself," police spokesman Mariusz Sokolowski said. The news agency PAP said it learned that Lepper had hanged himself, but it did not disclose its source for the information. Police and prosecutors said they were waiting for the results of an autopsy before commenting further.

Andrzej Lepper, a pig farmer-turned-firebrand populist who was briefly deputy prime minister in a shaky government and who was later disgraced by a sex scandal, has died in what police suspected to be a suicide. He was 57. Lepper's body was found in his party office in Warsaw on Friday afternoon, police said. "Everything indicates that he killed himself," police spokesman Mariusz Sokolowski said.

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The news agency PAP said it learned that Lepper had hanged himself, but it did not disclose its source for the information. Police and prosecutors said they were waiting for the results of an autopsy before commenting further.

Lepper rose to prominence during the 1990s, a time of deep social frustration in the early years after the fall of communism in Poland. Many communist-era jobs had been lost, unemployment was stuck around 20 percent, and the country was not yet enjoying the economic boom that came with European Union membership in 2004.

His outspoken manner won him the votes of the frustrated. To his supporters, he was a daring advocate for the poor and he was sometimes dubbed "the Polish Le Pen" for his populist positions — a comparison with the French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. At one point, Lepper told his supporters that should he come to power, he would order the central bank to print huge quantities of cash to distribute to the poor. He also called for convicted pedophiles to be castrated without painkillers.