A slush fund is a fund or account that is not properly accounted, such as money used for
corrupt or illegal purposes, especially in the political sphere. 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
discreetly in return for preferential treatment, advance information (such as
non-public information in financial transactions), and other services. 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
subversive
Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, hierarchy, and social norms. ...
of the
democratic process.
In accounting, the term ''slush fund'' describes a
general ledger account of commingled funds to which all manner of transactions can be posted, with
debits and
credit
Credit (from Latin verb ''credit'', meaning "one believes") is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a de ...
s cancelling each other.
Examples
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was t ...
's "
Checkers speech" of 1952 was a somewhat successful effort to dispel a scandal concerning a slush fund of
campaign contributions. Years later, Nixon's presidential re-election campaign used slush funds to buy the silence of the "
White House Plumbers".
Etymology
The term ''slush fund'' was originally a
nautical term: the slush was the
fat or
grease skimmed from the top of the cauldron when boiling
salted meat. Ship officers would sell the fat to