The suspended executives of the Road Accident Fund have threatened to reveal massive corruption involving the legal fraternity and other professionals in their fight for reinstatement.
Collins Letsoalo and Sefore Modiba who have been suspended as CEO and Chief Investment Officer respectively held a joint media briefing in Pretoria on Saturday where they said they were undeterred.
The two were adamant that their suspension was part of pushback that they said had captured the RAF and felt displaced by the current management.
“I’m undeterred. So if the battle is coming, let’s have that battle,” said Letsoalo on his determination.
Letsoalo said the judiciary has normalised what are essentially foreign practices when dealing with the RAF.
“Where this comes from. From the 2020s, we have, we have little of this thing. Where judge presidents walk with files and they take them home.And when their matters must get to the judge president, they’re left with the files. What does it do? What is that looking for?So we have a lot,” he said.
Letsoalo said attacks on him was about restoring the so-called RAF panel, a non statutory decision making forum constituted by interested stakeholders he did away with and said was used formalise the entity’s capture.
“Let’s deal with the issue of judicial misconduct. It’s about this panel that people wanted.(1:28) It took 3.8 billion a year from RAF. RAF used to pay 10.6 billion worth of legal costs.But I’m going to show you the capture of this judiciary and how indifferent they are when you start to say, ‘but one of you is misleading’ they close ran,I saw them yesterday closing rank,” he said of the panel and how tainted judicial officers protect each other.
“Today, I’m just going to give you only one letter about the panel. And I’m going to show you all the others of how they squeeze the system, they change the rules, they use directives to change rules so that we have this problem that is at the RAF. And then they want to come and say, no, no, no these guys are creating a problem by not leaving the panel.And it went all the way to Constitutional Court, by the way. It is Mabunda VS the RAF We trounced it all the way to the Constitutional Court.And the rationality of that decision was tested. It is only Judge Madondo who is now in the SCA, that did not see that. That was lawful.And I’m going to show you. Because she used to own a law firm that was on the panel. But she ruled, she sat there and did funny things,” said Letsoalo of one of the presiding officers.
Other than the labour dispute, the executives are also expected to face off with law firms and pressure groups with whom they have been engaged in the battle for control of the RAF when the inquiry instituted by the Select Committee on Public Accounts gets underway.
The Association for the Protection of Road Accident Victims ( APRAV) which has led the charge against the executives welcomed the inquiry as “ as a long-awaited step toward accountability and justice”.
“This development is the result of more than a decade of APRAV’s dedicated work, raising serious concerns about maladministration, irregular tenders, and governance failures at the Fund — issues that have affected countless road accident victims and families,” said APRAV in a media statement.
Letsoalo has meanwhile questioned the NGO’s credibility and its involvement with state institutions which he said raised a lot of questions.
He said it was a fighting tool for lawyer Gert Nel whom he said takes the lion’s share of RAF payouts and has undue influence on SCOPA itself.