LPC probes staff for allegedly taking bribes from lawyers

Holiday trips to Dubai paid for by dodgy lawyers facing multiple misconduct cases and millions of rand in alleged bribes in bank accounts of staff members of the legal profession watchdog. 

These benefits were allegedly paid by legal practitioners under investigation for misappropriation of funds to the Legal Practice Council (LPC) employees.

The LPC which regulates the conduct of lawyers said most of the implicated legal practitioners are those who are accused of mismanaging money from their clients who have successfully claimed from the Road Accident Fund and to those who won medical negligence lawsuits.

The council said the discovery of alleged bribes to its staff was made during a three-week investigation with the assistance of the Financial Intelligence Centre looking into suspicious transactions of conveyancing lawyers.

Kabelo Letebele, spokesperson for the LPC said a report by FIC flagged transactions uncovered between the conveyancing lawyers and their legal officers.

Letebele said about three of their staff members have been suspended in their East London office in the Eastern Cape and more from their Gauteng office have also confirmed to have been approached and offered bribes by legal practitioners. 

Now the legal watchdog has widened its investigation into all their nine offices in the country. The investigation will include lifestyle audits of more than 400 staff members. Of these, the LPC employs over 100 legal officers nationally who are vital to prepare the cases before matters are considered by the investigating and disciplinary committees. 

Letebele said in East London the lifestyle audit carried out uncovered that the suspended employees had received alleged bribes of between R1m and R3m while another was paid with holiday trips to Dubai.

LPC's executive officer Charity Nzuza said the jobs of the identified employees were to open files, compile, assess evidence, capture information on the systems and preparing cases to be heard by the Investigating Committees and disciplinary committees. The committees are independent panels appointed in all provincial offices.

“So far, it would appear some legal practitioners who were being investigated by the LPC would approach staff members and offer bribes to make cases disappear, or to compromise evidence in an attempt to ensure the person against whom complaints have been lodged would not be found guilty when matters appear before the independent investigating committees or disciplinary committees,” she said.

“While the systems are auditable and all lodged matters can be tracked and audited, we are still very much reliant on ethical and professional conduct by our staff, who are legal practitioners,” said Nzuza.

Letebele said their three-week-old investigation was triggered by FIC's report which flagged the involvement of real estate lawyers in dodgy and undisclosed transactions.

"Since the report came out we then started working together with the FIC and uncovered that some of our staff members have been assisting legal practitioners that are under investigation. We are now doing all these investigations to assess how wide this matter is. We are also going to revisit cases that the implicated individuals handled to check whether the outcome was fair," said Letebele adding that they have never dealt with such a problem before.

He added that they had set up a task team which comprised of risk and compliance officers, human resources and IT (to monitor staff devices).  

Over 170 legal practitioners have been struck off the roll and barred from practising in the past three years for acts of misconduct, some of which are linked to Road Accident Fund (RAF) claims.

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