Monitoring Financial Assets of Slovak Judges

Although the Slovak Code of Judicial Ethics provides that judges must not “require or receive any gifts, benefits or privileges” in exchange for favourable decision-making, the database of end-year financial statements reveals that judges receive gifts in abundance, including money, luxurious cars, and real estate. The difficulty is that tracking change of assets of judges, and distinguishing lawful transfer of property from corruption requires time and resources, which are unavailable. Of course, this is a more general problem neither unique nor limited to Judicial Self-Governance in Slovakia. But Slovakia provides for an interesting case to study the maladaptive implementation of a formal device –monitoring of financial assets of judges– to a local context characterised by a high concentration of dense informal networks. Lower court judges in Slovakia have a statutory obligation to declare their assets annually by filing a financial statement. These statements are collected and published every year on a dedicated website by the Judicial Council, which is a body of Judicial Self-Governance responsible for monitoring and disciplining judges. The publication of these data online in principle allows everyone, including judges, to monitor judges. But because the database is vast, complex, and disorganised, monitoring costs are prohibitively high. Especially for the Judicial Council, whose members are not remunerated for their service. These factors create adverse incentives against scrutiny. The problem with the mechanism for declaration of financial assets of Slovak judges became apparent after a recent high-profile investigation into alleged corruption of several judges and officials. The investigation has not been closed yet, but based on available information, the judges involved received gifts and favours for influencing case outcomes. At least some of the gifts were declared, but the Judicial Council failed to flag the suspect transfers of property and raise the alarm. This paper critically examines the mechanism for declaration of financial assets by Slovak judges and the monitoring by the Judicial Council. The obligation of judges to declare assets was introduced to the system to disincentivise gift exchange and illicit transfer of property, but it does not seem to work optimally. The paper also analyses the declared receipts of gifts by Slovak judges to identify shortcoming of the system.