Ultimately, the evaluation of any registry depends on whether it produces measurable results. In the case of the Slovak RPVS, the answer is not merely theoretical—there are concrete figures, documented cases, and internationally recognized cross-border impact. OGP noted that the reform has been positively received both domestically and abroad, and international organizations actively use data from the Slovak registry as evidence of the effectiveness of ownership transparency systems.
Measurable results from the first few years
The OGP documents concrete results: one in four companies identified a beneficial owner who had not previously been listed in the commercial register. A quarter of the actual owners of companies doing business with the state were thus invisible to the public and regulatory authorities before the RPVS was established—the registry revealed them for the first time.
Civil society, in analyzing the published records, identified 190 public officials among the beneficial owners—a potential conflict of interest in procurement that could not have been systematically identified without a publicly accessible registry.
Open Ownership also reports measurable results: statistical overviews showed that the measures dramatically improved ownership transparency among companies in public procurement.
In 2018 and 2019, only 40 public contracts worth €15.5 million did not have a registered ultimate beneficial owner. The vast majority of contracts thus went to entities with an identified UEB—a result that most European countries did not achieve during the same period.
Sanction Mechanism
Act No. 315/2016 Z. z. introduced a multi-tiered sanction framework.
- The first level is a financial penalty: a fine of up to 1 million euros.
- The second is an intervention in the entity’s very existence in the registers: removal from the commercial register.
- The third is exclusion from the public procurement market: a ban on participating in public procurement for up to three years.
OGP assesses this three-tier mechanism as one of the strictest in Europe and as one of the reasons why compliance rates under the Slovak model have fared well compared to systems with less stringent sanctions.
The RPVS is not just a database—it is a system with an enforcement mechanism.
OGP highlights the strong sanction mechanism: fines of up to 1 million euros, removal from the commercial register, and a ban on participating in public procurement for up to three years. OGP considers these sanctions to be among the strictest in Europe. The combination of financial penalties, removal from the register, and temporary exclusion from the public procurement market creates a strong incentive to comply with legal obligations.
Cross-border impact — the Babiš/Agrofert case
An internationally known example of the use of data from the Public Sector Partner Register (RPVS) was the case involving Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and the Agrofert group. In 2018, Transparency International Czech Republic pointed out that Babiš was a beneficiary of trust funds owning Agrofert.
The Slovak Public Sector Partners Register listed Babiš as the ultimate beneficiary of entities associated with Agrofert, which became one of the publicly available sources used to document the group’s ownership structure. The public availability of data in the RPVS enabled civil society, journalists, and oversight bodies to compare ownership data across jurisdictions.
Following a complaint from Czech colleagues, the European Commission confirmed Babiš’s conflict of interest regarding EU agricultural subsidies. This case has become an internationally cited example of how publicly available data on ultimate beneficial owners can help uncover conflicts of interest among top political leaders—even in a country other than the one where the data is published. Transparency International cites it as a prime example in favor of making EIB registries publicly available—an approach that Slovakia has maintained despite the 2022 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
