The Road Accident Fund (RAF) is attempting to claw back some of the funds lost as a result of years of maladministration and corruption. 

City Press says RAF senior legal manager Gontse Baloyi wrote to the Legal Practice Council to institute investigations in terms of section 37(1) of the Legal Practice Act into the conduct of 102 law firms that owe the RAF a combined R340 060 278 as of 1 March 2021.

This amount is a result of duplicate payments made to the law firms by the RAF.

In his letter to the council, Baloyi said: ‘These law firms have failed and/or refused to return the duplicate payments despite having received the money in their trust accounts and knowing that such payments were made in duplicate.’

Among the alleged owing law firms is Ndobela Lamola Attorneys, a law firm Justice Minister Ronald Lamola worked for.

According to the RAF complaint to the council, Ndobela Lamola Attorneys owes the RAF R2 287 395 in outstanding duplicate payments made to it by the fund. When approached for comment by City Press, Lamola’s spokesperson Chrispin Phiri shared a statement by Ndobela Lamola Attorneys in which the law firm confirmed that such errant payments were made by the RAF.

‘We confirm that indeed duplicate payments were made into our trust account; however, the money was returned to the RAF once it was apparent to us that duplicate payments had been made. Therefore it is misleading that our firm has failed and or refused to reimburse the RAF as alleged,’ reads the statement.

It further indicates that Ndobela Lamola Attorneys had since sent proof of payment regarding the alleged duplicate payments to the RAF ‘on 17 March 2021’.

‘In this premise, we hope that the RAF will clarify what appears to be an error in its correspondence to the Legal Practice Council.’

Full City Press report

RAF letter

 

In its complaint to the LPC, the RAF refers to the transactions as ‘payments made in error’.

The complaint, which has been widely circulated in the legal fraternity in the last few days, shows that the RAF was much more prone to errors with some law firms’ claims than others.

It is noted that more than R45m of the alleged R340m worth of ‘erroneous payments’ were made to a single law firm in Pretoria.

Four law firms allegedly received between R20m and R30m in error while five more apparently received between R10m and R20m.

The smallest ‘error’ amounted to a meagre R2 879.

RAF is demanding an inspection of the accounting records of all the law firms, saying ‘it is apparent to the RAF that the firms have utilised the duplicate payments for purposes other than that for which the payment was received in trust’.

LPC spokesperson Nonhlanhla Skosana is quoted in Die Burger as confirming that the LPC received the complaint in March.

Skosana said the regulatory body is engaging with the RAF about the contents of the complaint.

Full report in Die Burger (subscription needed)