At a press conference yesterday, justice minister Lucia Zitnanska announced that she had requested the Constitutional Court to start disciplinary action against the chairman of the Supreme Court, Stefan Harabin, reports newswire TASR .
Harabin has blocked four attempts of the Ministry of Finance to conduct an audit at the Supreme Court in the past few months. Minister Zitnanska is demanding that every court head be accountable to the law, adding that the ministry had received numerous complaints about Harabin.
Zitnanska is even calling for the toughest possible punishment, which would see Harabin lose 70% of his official salary for a period of one year.
Harabin feels that Mrs. Zitnanska was just trying to provoke further conflict, even after an investigator and special prosecutor had disqualified the case. He said he would be curious to see whether she and finance minister Ivan Miklos, who initiated the audit, would stand down once their case is thrown out of court.
Harabin continues to insist that only the Supreme Audit Authority (NKU) should conduct the audit, but these audits were already conducted at the Supreme Court in the past by the Ministry of Finance.
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