Explosive new documents reveal how SA’s second-largest medical scheme appears to have been quietly captured.
There’s a moment in every scandal when rumour hardens into evidence as whistleblowers come forward with emails, draft contracts and threads, spelling out in black and white the anatomy of a con.
That moment has arrived for Bonitas Medical Scheme. A whistle-blower’s flash drive now in my possession lays bare a concerted effort, meticulously planned and expertly executed, to capture the R20bn scheme from the inside. It details how senior executives, trustees and favoured consultants appear to have bent procurement rules, misused confidential data and fronted ownership structures to redirect lucrative contracts to their own circle.
It’s been a year since I first wrote about shenanigans at Bonitas (“Anatomy of a scandal: Bonitas said to have lost Sanlam’s trust”, October 14 2024). The allegation was unusually and vociferously defended by the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) — which, lest we forget, is entrusted with protecting scheme members’ interests — but this new information is a bombshell ripping through that façade and the urgency to act can no longer be swept under the carpet.
What I can now say with confidence is that the original request for proposals (RFP) that led to a start-up only registered towards the end of 2023, Agile Alternative Business Solutions, being awarded the marketing, sales and distribution contracts for all Bonitas options, was written by the would-be winner.
It all started with Project Stepahead, the board-approved strategy to put the Bonitas sales, marketing and distribution contracts out on tender. And it appears that this was all well planned and executed by Bonitas principal officer Lee Callakoppen; Willem Britz, a former executive at AfroCentric; Tobie du Preez, former Afrocentric Distribution Services (ADS) CEO and current executive at Agile; and scheme attorney Aneesa Mahomed of GMI Attorneys.
Agile was registered only in 2023, with the joint venture 70% owned by controversial business person Elias Monhla’s Marara Group and the remaining 30% owned by Du Preez company DPI Consulting.
Emails show how officials from Private Health Administrators (PHA), a subsidiary of the Marara Group, drafted — alongside Du Preez — Bonitas’ own RFP for distribution services before it was ever issued. The draft included two exclusion clauses: one barring insurer-owned companies, which would preclude the incumbent, ADS; and another excluding anyone serving other open schemes.
ADS had just delivered record member growth, so removing it would prove tricky for Callakoppen, who quietly deleted the first clause but kept the second. It would appear ADS was able to overcome this clause by demonstrating that as an entity it provided services to only one open scheme and therefore participated in the RFP, much to the dismay of Callakoppen.
Du Preez then sent the RFP to Britz, a former executive at AfroCentric and central figure in this plan to capture Bonitas, for discussion. From the evidence it would appear that Britz actually controls Agile and was actively involved in registering it and issuing instructions to the likes of Du Preez and others to meet the company’s compliance obligations, including VAT registrations, BEE accreditation and share certificates.
Emails show how far the insiders went to disguise Du Preez’s fingerprints on Agile’s expression of interest (EOI). They reveal a certain Ricardo Manual’s temporary contract with Agile, his inclusion in the EOI submission, and how Manual acted as a proxy for Du Preez and Callakoppen, who are close friends.
Before the EOI briefing Du Preez and Callakoppen met privately. Then, at the 11th hour Du Preez inserted both Manual and Marinda du Plessis (his long-time assistant and contractor at DPI Consulting) into the submission. Manual’s conflict of interest was never flagged. Only later, when questions were raised publicly, was he quietly replaced by Diketso Mogano.
These machinations were designed to create just enough plausible distance between the Bonitas insiders and the company they were steering towards victory. Agile was a façade. Marara employees produced the presentations Agile later submitted as its own.
What’s more, slides for Bonitas’s “Project StepAhead” match word for word an internal corporate strategy proposal created by ADS a year earlier. ADS’s authorship metadata remains embedded in the files. DPI rebranded the work and sold it back to the scheme.
Board minutes and emailed chats confirm that before StepAhead reached trustees, Du Preez, Callakoppen, Britz and scheme attorney Mahomed met at GMI Attorneys to map the pitch. GMI later co-presented the project at the board meeting, a striking conflict for the scheme’s own lawyers. The board approved it.
From that point insiders ran the show. Board chair Oupa Komane shared scheme information with Monhla by sending documents from his official Bonitas email address, first to his personal email and then on to Monhla.
My albatross alleges that the Marara bloc influenced trustee elections, pushing friendly candidates and blocking dissenters to cement control.
The CMS maintained it “was unaware of allegations” when questioned last year. But it’s now time for it to launch a full-scale investigation to examine voting records and conflict declarations to see if that pattern holds.
It should be easy enough for the CMS to follow the money trail. Invoices from Marara-linked entities and the StepAhead project should be cross-checked against scheme payments. If funds flowed through intermediaries controlled by the same small circle, members’ contributions may have subsidised the capture itself.
• Avery, a financial journalist and broadcaster, produces BDTV’s ‘Business Watch’. Contact him at michael@fmr.co.za.
