Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts on Tuesday announced it would conduct an inquiry into the state of finances at the Road Accident Fund.
This follows numerous allegations of maladministration, financial mismanagement, wasteful and reckless expenditure and related financial misconduct at the fund.
The investigation will also look into whistle-blower accounts about supply chain irregularities involving more than R1bn, committee chair Songezo Zibi said in a statement.
The committee has for months been questioning the fund on its state of governance. MPs voiced dissatisfaction over RAF presentations to parliament when the management and board appeared before it recently.
“The volume of complaints and related documentary disclosures to the committee about the RAF make it necessary to examine them thoroughly, and make such recommendations as may be necessary to ensure that the institution does its work within legal and constitutional prescripts, and serves the public interest as intended,” said Zibi.
“An inquiry will also give everyone involved or implicated the opportunity to state their case under oath and receive a fair hearing before the committee draws its conclusions.”
The decision by the committee came on the same day the fund’s CEO Collins Letsoalo and its board were squaring off in the Pretoria high court over the latter’s decision to suspend him for “insubordination”.
The board suspended the CEO for failing to appear before Scopa.
Letsoalo is challenging the suspension.
In court papers, RAF board chair Zanele Francois also accused Letsoalo of omitting information from the fund’s presentation that was going to be presented to the committee in parliament on May 28.
“The initial presentation reflected that, ‘the current RAF corporate legal panel was appointed in December 2023 and has a total of 43 law firms. Only 19 law firms have since been briefed and paid during 2023 and 2024. A total of R76m in 2023 and R104m in 2024.’ The applicant removed in its entirety the aforementioned explanation,” Francois’s papers read.
Letsoalo accused Francois of misleading the court.
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