Slush fund

Richard Nixon'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". 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. 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. The existence and purpose of these slush funds were discovered during the Hockey Canada sexual assault scandal in 2022. $7.6 million in 11 sexual assault settlements were paid out by these funds between 1989 and 2022. == Etymology ==

"Slush fund" was originally a 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. == See also ==