The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has signed acknowledgments of debt with law firms and attorneys to the value of approximately R68 million to reimburse the Road Accident Fund (RAF) after they allegedly committed unlawful acts of appropriation.
This comes after the firm allegedly received duplicate payments totalling R340 million from the RAF as compensation to people injured in road accidents.
Instead of returning the duplicate payments to the RAF, legal practitioners either kept the money in their trust accounts or used it for their personal benefit, SIU spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said in a statement.
He said the SIU had so far managed to recover R18 million. This means a further R322m is still to be collected.
“The SIU is looking at 102 law firms which received duplicate payments from the RAF of approximately R340 060 277, 97. When approached with the evidence, several legal practitioners opted to co-operate with the SIU investigation in defrayal of their indebtedness by signing acknowledgments of indebtedness,” Kganyago said.
In 2021 President Cyril Ramaphosa authorised the SIU to investigate serious allegations of corruption and maladministration in the affairs of RAF. His Proclamation authorises the SIU to investigate compensation payments made by RAF to claimants or claimants’ agents, payments made by RAF in a manner that is contrary to the applicable legislations, and to recover financial losses suffered by the State or RAF.
Meanwhile, the RAF has financial woes of its own as the sheriff of the court yet again swooped on its Menlyn office to confiscate furniture due to non-payment of supplier claims recently. At the same time, the RAF headed to court to obtain yet another bailout for paying out claims to accident victims. In 2021 the RAF obtained a series of reprieves granting it extensions to pay out accident victims. The last of these ran out after RAF CEO, Collins Letsoalo, managed to get a six-month extension. He has filed an urgent application for a further reprieve of 12 months.
He has also asked that, if he is successful in the first part of his application, the court order should be made public so that affected parties can decide if they want to accept or oppose it. Should they want to oppose it they can then state their case in court at a later stage. He said about 187 000 claims were involved in the application, making it impossible to alert everyone to the court application other than through public means.
Letsoalo claims that only a structured and balanced approach to paying for the claims will avoid the system collapsing countrywide. His application for legal reprieve does not include medical practitioners and hospitals, which is why these suppliers have pursued their own legal action that recently led to a hospital group attaching RAF furniture.
