Mr. Ebrahim Patel, former Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition; file photo
The National Lotteries Commission (NLC) has spent almost R1.5-million in two financial years on a case against the lottery minister who sought to stop the rampant corruption that overwhelmed the organization.
New Minister for Trade, Industry and Competition (TIC) Parkes Tau has revealed the cost of legal action against her predecessor Ebrahim Patel in response to written questions from Democratic Alliance MP Toby Chance.
Mr Chance asked for details of NLC's legal and consultancy fees that “relate directly or indirectly to ministries, media outlets, journalists and members of parliament”.
The “legal actions” identified in Mr Tau's response occurred in the 2019/20 and 2021/22 financial years.
Mr Tau listed several issues on which the NLC had filed a case against Patel.
Patel told parliament in 2022 how he faced “legal action” and a “counter-campaign” against him when he tried to address NLC's governance issues and hold the board and executive accountable. He told parliament how the project had started.
“NLC funds intended for the most vulnerable communities and projects – nursing homes, drug rehabilitation centres, early childhood centres – have been cynically and brazenly stolen by organized syndicates,” Patel said.
“Syndicates that have looted public funds can rely on a network of specialized companies to enable them to direct funds, and these syndicates have developed sophisticated techniques to conceal and distract their actions. I had it,” he said.
“Courageous people, from whistleblowers to journalists to investigators, are essential to exposing fraud and showing how funds flow between NLCs and recipients, bypassing their original local beneficiaries. Ta.”
Mr. Patel cited the nine lawsuits as examples of the NLC's strategy of using public funds to pursue costly and sustained litigation against him.
“When it became clear that the ministry was serious about fighting corruption, various steps were taken by third parties and NLC individuals to frustrate the ministry,” he said.
These include:
- In March 2020, a large number of people were “taken away on buses at great cost” and protested outside his office in opposition to the disclosure of information about the identities of individual beneficiaries. . (The NLC finally relented when the Portfolio Committee ordered it to disclose details of its beneficiaries.)
- The threats of legal action and letters from lawyers “appeared to be orchestrated and required a detailed response to be developed.”
- Litigation was commenced in the High Court and in certain matters referred to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
- Reporting of arson, vehicle tampering, and whistleblower actions.
- Numerous “anonymous and defamatory attacks” against investigative journalists in print and social media [this reporter] Department” and its “motives for seeking an investigation into corruption allegations.”
In the end, Patel won. A new NLC board and commissioners were appointed and appear to have made a concerted effort to improve the organization's governance.
lawsuit against the minister
The case against Patel also included an application by former NLC member Thabang Mampane to compel the appointment of a new NLC director. Her application comes days after Ms Patel told parliament that she had instructed her lawyers to terminate the terms of the three remaining members of the NLC board, and the deadline for applications and nominations for new NLC board members It started immediately after.
In 2020, lawyers acting for the NLC wrote to Mr Patel requesting that he provide documents regarding alleged corruption involving several dodgy projects with Lottery funds that had been handed over to the Hawks for investigation. The projects involved Pretoria lawyer Leslie Ramlipho and NLC's former chief operating officer Philemon Letwaba.
The Pretoria High Court had rejected NLC's application to stay the appointment two years ago of an independent investigator commissioned by Patel to investigate corruption involving NLC in early 2022.
Patel named three organizations that filed suit against him: United Citizens for Action (UCSA), Zakeni Ma Africa, and the African Freedom Movement.
NLC is listed as one of the respondents in all of these matters, but all three organizations have made similar claims that NLC has argued that it is illegal to publish details of the grants. It is expanding.
UCSA also tried to sue GroundUp, but dropped the case and agreed to pay the news agency's legal costs (which it has not yet paid).
The UCSA, led by Tebogo Sitatu, who is close to the previous NLC government, has sent a lawyer's letter to Patel requesting that details of organizations that received lottery grants not be made public.
GroundUp reported earlier this month how Mr Sisatu is involved in a new counterattack to remove the current NLC board and commissioners.
Zakeni Ma Africa and the African Freedom Movement both tried unsuccessfully to prevent the publication of details of the grants and sued Patel. Mr Zakeni received a total of R1.2 million in lottery grants from 2020/21 to 2021/22.
In its 2021 response to Democratic MP Matt Cuthbert's written parliamentary question on legal costs, the NLC said it had spent R380,000 on the Zakeni issue and R370,000 on the African Freedom Movement issue. The response also mentioned the lawsuit brought by UCSA, but did not mention the amount of NLC's legal fees.
The same response revealed that NLC had spent tens of millions of rands on legal fees since 2016.
GroundUp reported last week that the NLC had spent more than R73 million on litigation and disciplinary investigations involving past and present staff.
This article was first published by GroundUp.
