BRATISLAVA, August 2, (WEBNOVINY) – Supreme Court President and former Justice Minister Stefan Harabin requested the Supreme Audit Office to carry out an audit at the court. “It is an audit aimed at the same area as the Finance Ministry had planned. I also issued an order to have all economic contracts published on the Internet. We have nothing to conceal, citizens can make a picture of management of public funds at the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic for themselves,” said Harabin. The Supreme Audit Office is headed by Jan Jasovsky, a former deputy of the LS-HZDS which had nominated Harabin to the post of Supreme Court president.
The Finance Ministry’s audit that he prevented last week has been politicized, Harabin stated. The Supreme Court president added that Finance Minister Ivan Miklos confirmed in his statements that he did not want an independent audit but was scandalizing with the objective to take away the budget chapter from the Supreme Court.
In a resolution of the Slovak Constitutional Court, an executive political power, such as the Finance Ministry, may not carry out an audit at the Supreme Court. “Rulings of the senate of the Slovak Constitutional Court must be respected in a country with the rule of law,” Harabin stated.
The Finance Ministry still plans to perform the audit that Miklos still says Harabin prevented. The Finance Ministry will carry out a government audit at the Supreme Court in line with the law on financial audits, as it had planned, Head of PR department at the ministry Mikulas Gera reported. It is a standard process, and similar audits were carried out at the court in 2007 and 2009, Gera added.
Inspectors of the Ministry of Finance tried to start an approved audit at the Supreme Court on Thursday, but Harabin prevented them from doing so, claims Miklos who also called the actions of Supreme Court President willful. „It could also mean an abuse of judicial independence,“ Miklos said at a specially convened news conference, and added he does not know why the President of the Supreme Court is afraid. Neither the Supreme Court nor its president is using their own money but taxpayers‘ money, Miklos pointed out. „It is undisputed that the Finance Ministry is entitled to review the legality and effectiveness of the use of that money,“ said Miklos who documented this claim by the fact that the Finance Ministry had already audited finances at the Supreme Court in the past.
The Finance Minster said he had signed a mandate for the government audit on July 21, which stated that it should start on July 27. After being informed by the Finance Ministry that the audit would begin at 13:00 on July 27, the Supreme Court’s administration director Jan Hurban asked to postpone the proposed date by two days, to July 29 at 15:00, stated Miklos. „We accepted their request and when we came at a time they requested…and eventually, the Supreme Court President personally prevented the audit in that he had questioned validity of the mandate for the audit,“ added Miklos.
Harabin rejected the Miklos’s statements as untrue and claims that on Thursday, July 29, 2010, he [Harabin] asked inspectors of the Finance Ministry to present a mandate for the government audit effective of the day they wanted to actually carry out the audit. Had the finance department observed the law and brought a mandate with the date of July 29, 2010, they could have started the audit immediately, according to Harabin.
SITA