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Road Accident Fund (RAF) boss Collins Letsoalo has been accused of abusing his power to settle personal scores by withholding payments to law firms that challenged his appointment, leaving accident victims in the lurch.
Pretoria attorney Kabelo Malao has detailed how his firm, K Malao Incorporated, has suffered in Letsoalo’s alleged spiteful charge that, he said, has seen payments amounting to R15 million, including interest, due to 15 road accident victims, unpaid.
He said the payments dated back three years and that all attempts to get RAF to pay, including court orders, has been in vain.
“I am talking here about poor people from impoverished rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal who are suffering because [Letsoalo] has an axe to grind with me.
He is using taxpayers’ money to pursue his vendetta against me and he has admitted to this in one of his affidavits,” Malao said.
Letsoalo has refused to comment as the matter was in court.
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Last year, Malao’s law firm and five other firms lost an urgent court application to have Letsoalo’s appointment as chief executive officer declared unlawful.
The law firms had argued that Letsoalo already had a track record of destabilising the RAF, including suspending senior officials, making new appointments directly reporting to him.
They also accused the RAF boss of barring claim handlers from communicating with panel attorneys, despite matters being on trial.
Letsoalo was also accused of taking decisions that were the purview of the board, including doing away with the RAF panel attorneys and cancelling the tender for the appointment of a new panel.
The law firms claimed RAF’s legal representation in pending trials has been a perplexing mess that and remain unresolved due to Letsoalo’s “stubbornness”.
“[Letsoalo] has shown no leadership in this regard and has been responsible for the largest litigation crisis in all divisions of the high court,” the law firms charged in court papers.
According to Malao, Letsoalo claimed his firm has received duplicate payments from RAF and has refused to accept anything proving otherwise, including court orders and findings of an investigation conducted by an auditing company suggested by RAF.
He said going to court for attachment orders has been a futile exercise as Letsoalo simply applied for stay of execution and then for extension, but never pays.
Malao said they had had to repay payments flagged as duplicate, even though this was not the case, and to get RAF to pay, but Letsoalo would not budge.
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