Law Society hits back at Road Accident Fund CEO Collins Letsoalo

The Law Society of South Africa (LSSA) has condemned what it called unfounded and unsubstantiated accusations by the Road Accident Fund (RAF) chief executive Collins Letsoalo about alleged corrupt lawyers who complicated the RAF’s financial crisis.

LSSA representative, Justin Erasmus, said Letsoalo frequently attacked lawyers across the board but did so in vague terms.

The CEO was said to have accused them of having exacerbated problems at the RAF by making corrupt claims, which the profession denied.

“The Law Society of South Africa unequivocally condemns recent attempts to shift blame for the Road Accident Fund’s dysfunction onto the legal profession. These allegations, which claim that legal practitioners are exacerbating the RAF’s challenges, are misleading and part of a broader attempt to transform the RAF into a social benefits scheme.

“Such misrepresentation not only distracts from the real issue – serious institutional failures within the RAF – but also undermines the integrity of the legal profession,” an LSSA statement said.

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The LSSA said RAF management was attempting to deflect attention from the RAF crisis, which includes taking too long to pay claims for road accident victims.

Recently, Letsoalo said the reason for the massive backlog in their system was due to pending claims without supporting documents. But the lawyers said it was more than that, and cited the numerous suspensions of RAF employees, many of whom are on full pay pending investigation, as proof of the depth of the dysfunction within the RAF.

“These individuals, along with any legal or medical practitioners involved in corrupt activities, must be held accountable and prosecuted if found guilty. It is clear that the RAF’s current management is unsustainable, but the solution does not lie in scapegoating legal professionals.”

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Erasmus told The Citizen that Letsoalo’s accusations are aimed at deflecting attention away from the numerous problems that beset RAF. “It does not get us anywhere, it is destructive. If he has any evidence of people who are involved in corruption, he must identify those so that we can deal with them,” Erasmus said.

Erasmus said RAF often made sweeping statements about LSSA without specifics. Letsoalo allegedly also attacked lawyers and accused them of abusing the RAF system.

“As the Law Society we don’t get many complaints from our clients, we have very few reports coming to us, it’s a tiny minority. If RAF has problem, they must come forward instead of blaming the entire legal profession. We know that the accusations against the lawyers are used to deflect attention about the RAF problems,” Erasmus said.

“We cannot deny that there are a few bad apples among our lawyers, but there are more good people than the bad ones in the profession. We say, instead of painting the whole profession with the same brush, he must identify the rotten apples so that we can go after the few who are corrupt.”

LSSA said the rogue actors within the profession should not overshadow the majority of legal professionals who uphold the highest ethical standards. The problem lies not with the legal profession as a whole, but with the systemic collapse within the RAF, which has allowed a few to exploit its weaknesses, LSSA said in a statement.

Attempts to get comment from Letsoalo failed.

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