Platform for Democracy: Forecasting of NGO Audit Outcomes Raises Concerns

While conducting a government audit is legitimate, predicting its results in advance is problematic, director of the Platform for Democracy and former government proxy for developing civil society Filip Vagac has stated in response to Defence Minister Robert Kalinak's (Smer-SD) recent comment that a financial audit of NGOs is necessary due to their alleged misuse of funds.

"It's completely legitimate for a donor to conduct a check on how the entities they support are spending their funds. This happens regularly in the civil sector. Non-governmental organisations routinely monitor state institutions, private and corporate foundations, as well as large individual donors. However, I find it very problematic when someone suggests in advance how such an audit will turn out. This raises doubts about whether the government audit will be objective and impartial," stated Vagac.

Kalinak stated that "it's evident that non-governmental organisations misuse the funds they receive" and that they use 90 percent of them for "other purposes". The Platform for Democracy stated that if anyone has evidence of entities misusing funds or committing fraud, they should immediately report this to the authorities responsible for criminal proceedings.

"However, we're concerned that in this case, it isn't about the misuse of funds or fraud, but rather about searching for any, even minor, wrongdoing in order to unjustly criminalise the civil sector or discredit the good work that these organisations have done," added Vagac, noting that this mainly concerns organisations that helped the state to deal with the influx of Ukrainian refugees during the first months of the war in Ukraine.