BRATISLAVA, August 9, (WEBNOVINY) — The Ministry of Finance has the right to audit the use of public funds by the Supreme Court, Slovakia’s Ombudsman Pavol Kandrac is convinced. The Supreme Court President, Stefan Harabin, has repeatedly refused the government audit by the finance department and considers the audit illegal. Kandrac said after meeting with Prime Minister Iveta Radicova on Monday afternoon that he has been wondering since Friday what Harabin wanted to achieve when he conditioned his meeting with Finance Minister Ivan Miklos on the government audit on the presence of Kandrac as the Public Defender of Rights and Dobroslav Trnka as the General Prosecutor. „The audit is the sovereign right of the Finance Minister, so I do not know what our presence would or would not do there,“ Kandrac told SITA.
The Ombudsman cannot imagine which basic human rights could be violated by the ministerial audit at the Supreme Court. „I am leaving on vacation now, but I will also think about this there,“ Kandrac said. When a person works, he also makes mistakes, according to Kandrac. Mistakes can be automatic; a person does not have to be aware of them. „I invited the Supreme Audit Office to our office myself, because I consider it a certain style of management; and I am glad when someone else finds errors, and those will be removed,“ Kandrac said. If competent institutions invite him to the meeting of Miklos and Harabin, Kandrac will consider his presence at the audit; Harabin was formerly the Minister of Justice for the LS-HZDS during the previous government term, and Kandrac was a member of parliament for the same party several years ago.
For more than a week, the Ministry of Finance has been trying to make an audit approved by Miklos at the Supreme Court, but Harabin repeatedly would not allow it. First, he claimed that the inspectors did not have the correct date on the mandate since they came on another day than stated in the mandate, even though the Supreme Court asked to change the date of the audit. Later, Harabin defended the decision of the impossibility to audit the Supreme Court by the Ministry of Finance by one older resolution of the Constitutional Court plenary which does not allow the audit, according to Harabin. After meeting with the Prime Minister on Monday last week, the President of the Constitutional Court Ivetta Macejkova said that she did not know to which resolution of the Constitutional Court Harabin referred to. Miklos has already imposed a fine of EUR 33,000 to the Supreme Court for thwarting the audit and EUR 1,000 to Harabin. The penalty for refusing a government audit will be effective around September 6 at the earliest.
SITA