One of the law firms appointed by the Road Accident Fund to its 2020 Corporate Panel was not even on the panel from which the firms were supposed to be selected. It was then allocated almost 90% of the work.
The finding comes from the draft report of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA), which examined the RAF’s legal costs and the procurement and operation of its Corporate Panel as part of its broader inquiry into the Fund.
Before 2020, claims-related litigation was handled through the RAF’s panel of attorneys. In March 2020, the Fund decided to cancel that panel and move the work to the State Attorney, with the change presented as a more cost-effective way of handling claims. Separately, the RAF had a Corporate Panel for corporate legal services and other matters outside ordinary claims litigation.
The original Corporate Panel arrangement was supposed to last 10 months, with a R10-million budget. Neither proved to be much more than a ballpark figure. The RAF exceeded its budget within seven months and eventually extended the arrangement four times. Work was heavily concentrated in one firm, while the panel was also used for claims-related matters outside its original scope.
When a new Corporate Panel was finally appointed in December 2023, it was much larger – 43 firms – but payments remained heavily concentrated.
In April 2020, rather than wait for its own Corporate Panel to be...
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