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{{Short description|Fund used for illegal purposes}}
{{For|the television episode|Slush Fund (The Professionals)}}
{{use dmy dates|date=November 2025}}
{{Political corruption sidebar}}

A '''slush fund''' is a fund or account used for miscellaneous income and expenses, particularly when these are [[Political corruption|corrupt or illegal]].<ref>{{Cite web |year=2025 |title=Slush fund |url=https://www.dictionary.com/browse/slush-fund |url-status=live |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20240813032423/https://www.dictionary.com/browse/slush-fund |archive-date=2024-08-13 |access-date=2025-11-19 |website=[[Dictionary.com]] |language=en |quote=a sum of money used for illicit or corrupt political purposes, as for buying influence.}}</ref> Such funds may be kept hidden and maintained separately from money that is used for legitimate purposes. Slush funds may be employed by government or corporate officials in efforts to pay influential people [[wikt:discreet|discreetly]] in return for preferential treatment, advance information (such as [[Insider trading|non-public information]] in financial transactions), and other services.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Slush fund |encyclopedia=A dictionary of finance and banking |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199664931.001.0001/acref-9780199664931-e-3516 |date=2014 |editor-last=Law |editor-first=Jonathan |edition=Fifth |series=Oxford Reference |isbn=978-0-19-966493-1}}</ref> The funds themselves may not be kept secret but the source of the funds or how they were acquired or for what purposes they are used may be hidden. Use of slush funds to influence government activities may be viewed as [[Subversion (political)|subversive]] of the [[democratic process]].

A slush fund can also be a reserve account used to reduce fluctuations in an organization's earnings by withholding them when they are high and supplementing them when they are low. This type of slush fund is not inherently corrupt, but is nonetheless a form of [[earnings management]] that tends to mislead stakeholders about the organization's financial condition.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Accounting, Critical |encyclopedia=The SAGE Encyclopedia of Economics and Society |date=2015 |editor-last=Wherry |editor-first=Frederick F. |isbn=9781506300887}}</ref>

== Examples ==
[[Richard Nixon]]'s "[[Checkers speech]]" of 1952 was a somewhat successful effort to dispel a scandal concerning a slush fund of [[Campaign finance|campaign contributions]].<ref>{{cite web |last=LaGesse |first=David |date=January 17, 2008 |title=The 1952 Checkers Speech: The Dog Carries the Day for Richard Nixon |url=https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/01/17/the-dog-carries-the-day-for-nixon |url-status=live |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20241225200606/https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/01/17/the-dog-carries-the-day-for-nixon |archive-date=2024-12-25 |access-date=November 19, 2025 |work=[[U.S. News & World Report]]}}</ref> Years later, Nixon's presidential re-election campaign used slush funds to buy the silence of the "[[White House Plumbers]]".<ref>{{cite news |last=Weiner |first=Tim |date=October 31, 1997 |title=Transcripts of Nixon Tapes Show the Path to Watergate |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/31/us/transcripts-of-nixon-tapes-show-the-path-to-watergate.html |url-status=live |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20241228232045/https://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/31/us/transcripts-of-nixon-tapes-show-the-path-to-watergate.html |archive-date=2024-12-28 |access-date=November 19, 2025 |work=[[The New York Times]] |pages=A1}}</ref>

Financial derivative traders for [[Enron]] employed a slush fund system called "prudency reserves," in which the department reported part of each trade's profit or loss to the company and withheld the remainder. This system was originally used to regulate the trading department's profits, but also enabled the company to conceal large profits during the [[2000–01 California electricity crisis]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fox |first=Loren |title=Enron: The Rise and Fall |date=2004 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Inc |isbn=978-0-471-47888-1 |location=Hoboken}}</ref>

[[Hockey Canada]] maintained three slush funds to pay for sexual assault settlements perpetrated by ice hockey players and other uninsured claims. Membership fees from across Canada were used to fund at least one of these slush funds.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Robertson |first=Grant |date=2022-07-19 |title=How Hockey Canada used registration fees to build a fund to cover sexual-assault claims |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-hockey-canada-fund-sexual-assault-allegations/ |url-status=live |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20250928063112/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-hockey-canada-fund-sexual-assault-allegations/ |archive-date=2025-09-28 |access-date=2024-07-11 |work=[[The Globe and Mail]] |language=en-CA}}</ref> The existence and purpose of these slush funds were discovered during the [[Hockey Canada sexual assault scandal]] in 2022.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-10-19 |title=Hockey Canada maintained a third secret slush fund for sexual assault claims |url=https://ca.thegistsports.com/article/b56f0921-0504-40dc-b61e-e4bf58cc7d0b/ |url-status=live |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20250209123435/https://ca.thegistsports.com/article/b56f0921-0504-40dc-b61e-e4bf58cc7d0b/ |archive-date=2025-02-09 |access-date=2024-07-11 |website=The Gist |language=en}}</ref> $7.6 million in 11 sexual assault settlements were paid out by these funds between 1989 and 2022.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Burke |first=Ashley |date=2022-10-21 |title=Hockey Canada moved cash from fund used for sexual assault claims to avoid encouraging more claims: report |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/hockey-canada-transfered-millions-out-of-controversial-fund-1.6624089 |url-status=live |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20250820012223/https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/hockey-canada-transfered-millions-out-of-controversial-fund-1.6624089 |archive-date=2025-08-20 |access-date=2025-11-19 |work=CBC News}}</ref>

== Etymology ==
"Slush fund" was originally a [[Glossary of nautical terms (A-L)|nautical term]] for the cash that a ship's crew raised by selling [[fat]] (slush) scraped from cooking pots to [[tallow]] makers. This cash was kept separate from the ship's accounts and used to make small purchases for the crew.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Slush fund, n. |encyclopedia=[[OED Online]] |publisher=Oxford University Press |url=https://www.oed.com/dictionary/slush-fund_n?tab=meaning_and_use#22330792 |access-date=2025-11-19 |date=March 2024 |doi=10.1093/OED/3865691292}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Garg |first=Anu |date=2017-03-01 |title=slush fund |url=https://wordsmith.org/words/slush_fund.html |url-status=live |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20250325084357/https://www.wordsmith.org/words/slush_fund.html |archive-date=2025-03-25 |access-date=2025-11-19 |website=Wordsmith.org}}</ref>

== See also ==
* [[Caixa dois]]
* [[ISO 37001|ISO 37001 Anti-bribery management systems]]
* [[Group of States Against Corruption]]
* [[International Anti-Corruption Academy]]
* [[United Nations Convention against Corruption]]
* [[OECD Anti-Bribery Convention]]

== References ==
{{reflist}}

{{Corruption}}

[[Category:Corruption]]
[[Category:Financial crimes]]
[[Category:Funds]]
[[Category:Nautical terminology]]