Fugitive father and son duo Ronald and Darren Bobroff have forfeited R95m to the government after the Constitutional Court dismissed their last remaining option to continue their fight to get the money back.

It has been reported that the Bobroffs escaped to Australia ahead of their pending arrest on charges related to overcharging their Road Accident Fund clients through illegal fee agreements.

The Constitutional Court dismissed their application for leave to appeal against an SCA judgment which found the money was the proceeds of crime and should remain frozen.

Moneyweb reports that the ruling means the Bobroffs have exhausted all of their legal options and have consequently forfeited the money to the state.

Their lawyer, Richard Spoor, said the judgment ‘cements a manifest injustice that was done to my clients’.

Spoor added that the Bobroffs are more than willing to return to SA to stand trial if the NPA guarantees that they will not be arrested and held in custody during legal proceedings.

Spoor earlier this year urged thousands of ‘potentially guilty’ lawyers to support a petition to SA's Constitutional Court seeking leave to challenge the SCA ruling.

In a letter to the Legal Practice Council (LPC), Spoor drew the attention of the LPC and the Law Society of SA to ‘the significance and implications’ of the matter for many attorneys, and asked both bodies and their members to consider intervening in the proceedings at the Constitutional Court. He said the SCA judgment held significant implications for the ‘very large number of attorneys and law firms who also relied upon common law contingency agreements' and who 'failed to refund their “excess fees” after the Constitutional Court ruled that such fee agreements were unlawful in 2014'.

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The case dates back to March 2016 when the Bobroffs fled to Australia after the Hawks issued warrants for their arrest.

They were to face numerous criminal charges – including theft, fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion – related to their overcharging of clients, many of them badly injured and vulnerable victims of road accidents. NPA spokesperson Advocate Mthunzi Mhaga reportedly confirmed to Moneyweb that the money has been forfeited to the state.

‘The Bobroffs have exhausted all avenues to attack the final forfeiture order.’ Mhaga also said due to the absence of an extradition treaty with Australia, ‘it is therefore highly unlikely that they will ever stand trial in SA’. 

It has been reported that the SCA last year ordered that R7m of the more than R100m which was earlier forfeited to the state be handed back to the fugitives.

The assets were frozen by the Israeli authorities in terms of anti-money-laundering provisions and were later forfeited to the South African authorities in terms of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act.

The Bobroffs questioned on appeal whether the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) had jurisdiction to make a forfeiture order in terms of the Act in respect of property situated outside SA.

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