It is not so often that we see a majority vote in parliament these days, but a vote to have the Supreme Audit Office (NKU) investigate the legitimacy of how finances were used for the reconstruction of the Ondrej Nepela hockey stadium in Bratislava got the support of 135 MPs today.
The stadium, called the Orange Arena during the Ice Hockey World Championships, cost EUR 96 million to reconstruct and ran into financial troubles shortly before completion, eventually being saved by a loan from the Ministry of Finance.
The NKU audit will examine how effective the use of funds was and if the procurement process was above board or not. Questions were being asked during the construction already, as the initial projected budget of EUR 74.8 million started to soar, and finance minister Ivan Miklos wasted no time as he filed for the audit on the day the hockey championships finished.
Now the audit is set to go ahead, but only time will tell if anyone will have to bear liability for the excessive cost of the reconstruction in the end.
I see this audit will be like opening a can of worms in corruption and creative accounting 🙂