The decision by the Road Accident Fund (RAF) to cancel a panel of attorneys that represented the entity in court proceedings without plan has come back to haunt it.
There has been an increase in default judgments amounting to more than R4 billion issued against RAF since the termination of the panel of attorneys. The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) on Wednesday informed the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) that the RAF’s rationale for such a decision was now subject of its investigation.
“The total amount of default judgments issued against RAF for cost and fees from 2018 until second quarter of 2023 amounts to R4 780 244 641.47.
A sharp increase in the default judgments is noted between 2021 and 2022,” said SIU chief investigator Leonard Lekgetho.
Lekgetho cited a matter where a claimant was awarded a default court order amounting to R 11 171 022, which RAF failed to honour on time leading to the amount accumulating interest worth approximately R500 000 which was paid out in respect of the claimant. He said the matter was ongoing, and the SIU team was finalising its findings.
“The SIU has interviewed some of the RAF former board members and officials relevant to this matter. The pending interview is with the RAF office of the CEO. Based on the outcome of the interview with the office of the RAF CEO, that may necessitate an interview with other Board members,” Lekgetho added.
EFF MP Veronica Mente-Nkuna noted with concern the number of default judgments after the panel of attorneys was cancelled. She said ordinarily the processes of RAF should not get to the stage of default judgment if it was not engineered in the office.
“How did the system fail to get to the default judgments?” Mente Nkuna asked, adding that the panel was not doing much other than trying to “extinguish” fires of the system.
She believed that the panel was cancelled not out of spite.
“They were informed by practices they picked up,” Mente-Nkuna said.
The panel of attorneys is among the seven contracts the SIU is investigating within RAF after they were awarded to certain providers through procurement processes. The contracts were flagged for irregularities by the Auditor-General. Scopa also heard that the SIU was investigating duplicate claims payments made to attorneys, claimants and sheriff of the court.
Lekgetho said this investigation focused on the losses incurred by the state caused by duplicate payments made to several firms of attorneys as at March 2021.
“These duplicate payments were allegedly effected by the sheriffs who executed upon writs of execution and received funds on behalf of the instructing attorney.”
Lekgetho said the SIU was investigating 102 law firms that received duplicate payments of about R340 060 277 from the RAF .
“When approached with evidence, several legal practitioners have opted to cooperate with the SIU investigation in defrayal of their indebtedness by signing acknowledgments of debt.”
Cape Times