Minister of Health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has granted lawyers who submitted fraudulent claims to the national Department of Health two weeks to withdraw their submissions.
This comes after an investigation by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) found that over five years, a single law firm submitted 44 suspected fraudulent medico-legal claims to the tune of R497 million against the Eastern Cape Department of Health.
On Saturday, Motsoaledi revealed that an SIU investigation into alleged fraudulent medico-legal claims has saved the national Department of Health more than R3 billion while also revealing that Nozuko Nonxuba, of the Johannesburg-based Nonxuba Attorneys Inc, had over five years, submitted 44 suspected fraudulent medico-legal claims to the tune of R497m against the Eastern Cape Department of Health.
“Failure to withdraw within two weeks would mean that the offer will have lapsed and the SIU will strike,” he said.
“So far, in the matters completed by the SIU, the sum of R3,104,684,800 has been saved for various Departments of Health. We believe that this amount will increase as the investigations are still ongoing.”
Nonxuba has been accused of fleecing government of more than R300 million through fraudulent medico-legal claims.
He is accused of submitting false claims to the Eastern Cape Health Department.
Last year, Carte Blanche investigation reported that for over eight years, the Eastern Cape-based lawyer allegedly stole millions in medical negligence claims paid out by the Department of Health which were intended for his clients – children believed to have cerebral palsy.
It is reported that Nonxuba targeted families of children with cerebral palsy and even though he received millions from the government, he never paid them out, forcing the Legal Practice Council (LPC) to finally take action against him.
One of the victims in the Eastern Cape was awarded R15m in 2019 which was allegedly kept by the lawyer, who according to the minister, has been charged.
Motsoaledi said most of the fraudulent claims made against the department targeted those with cerebral palsy.
“While it is recognised that cerebral palsy is very debilitating, and unfortunate occurrence, to come from the health system, it is a matter of serious concern that this fact is abused by some legal medico practitioners due to sheer greed.
“The level of abuse was such that SIU found that some of the claims were made on behalf of patients without their knowledge. Meaning that there is a lawyer who has submitted a claim against the healthcare system for a particular patient and that patient knows nothing about it,’’ the minister said.
Early this month, IOL reported that the LPC had sought the help of the Western Cape High Court in striking Nonxuba’s name off the roll of attorneys following these damaging allegations against him.
IOL said the LPC had first set its sights on Nonxuba in 2021, after it learnt that in some of the matters in which Nonxuba was ordered by the court to establish trusts, the trusts in question had either not been established or had not received any funds from Nonxuba, to whom the damage awards had been paid.
In 2022, the LPC refused to issue Nonxuba with a fidelity certificate saying: “As a result of the allegations made against Mr Nonxuba and Nonxuba Inc, the LPC it would not issue him with the certificate.”
Motsoaledi said claims submitted by Nonxuba showed that all his clients were affected in the same way even though the condition had varying degrees of severity.
“Now cerebral palsy is not homogeneous, but claims submitted by Nonxuba Inc showed that for each of the victims claims, which we said were 44, nine of them which were for the children with cerebral palsy, were all R15m. It was very suspicious. We believe this indicates a lot of copy and paste, where you sue for one child and run around the village looking for more children, submit the same claim and just change the names of the children. We think this is what Nonxuba Attorneys were doing,” said Motsoaledi.
Motsoaledi said the SIU probe was sparked by a spike in medico-legal claims in provinces such as the Eastern Cape, Gauteng and the Western Cape since 2015.
He added that Gauteng and the Eastern Cape have the highest number of claims in terms medical negligence. “By that time, the Eastern Cape contingent liability in respect of medico-legal claims amounted to R15.9 billion while in Gauteng the figure was R21.2 billion.”
The Star