Whistle-blower reveals how accident fund is rotten to core

A former executive has revealed how the Road Accident Fund (RAF) was plagued by systemic corruption, fraudulent claims ,as well as financial mismanagement, including over R1.2 billion in duplicate payments, preferential payouts to select law firms and even payments to dead claimants.

- Sipho Mabena

Sefotle Modiba, who served as RAF's acting chief investment officer until June this year, painted a picture of an entity ravaged by chaos, corruption and incompetence in an explosive affidavit submitted to the parliament's standing committee on public accounts.

He testified that the RAF was “days away from financial collapse” when he joined the entity in May 2020.

“When I joined, I was presented with a ‘day zero’ liquidity scenario indicating RAF would not operate beyond December 2020. There were no quality assurance processes, no reconciliations and a complete absence of financial controls,” Modiba said.

Among his most damning revelations is that the RAF’s claims verification system had been deliberately disabled since 2016, making it impossible to detect duplicate payments and, as result, R1.2 billion was paid out on claims that had already been settled.

Modiba said investigators had uncovered claims finalised without confirming the identities of accident victims, leading to payouts to falsified identity numbers and ghost claimants.