Road Accident Fund loses court bid to block AG's report
Image: Supplied / ER24
The Road Accident Fund (RAF) has lost another court bid to stop the auditor-general (AG) from delivering her report on the organisation for the 2021-2022 financial year.
The Pretoria high court on Friday again dismissed the RAF’s urgent application with costs.
The court said if it granted the relief sought by the RAF this would prevent the AG from performing her statutory obligations.
In terms of the law, the AG's office is obliged to submit its audit report to the auditee (RAF), which must in turn submit it to parliament.
In February, the same court dismissed an application by the RAF to prevent the AG from publishing its disclaimer of opinion and audit report on the financial affairs of the fund.
The RAF wanted to stop the report from being published pending a review of the AG's findings. The fund argued that if the disclaimer and audit report were published, it would lead to the RAF suffering irreparable harm.
Judge Norman Davis in his judgment on Friday said: “I find that in the present case the fund has failed to objectively demonstrate that an imminent harm will befall it, should the AG perform her duties.”
The court fight between the RAF and AG Tsakani Maluleke has highlighted that the fund has liabilities amounting to more than R300bn.
At the core of the case is the RAF’s persistence to continue with the new accounting policy in preparing its financial statements for the 2021-2022 financial year, as it did in the 2020-2021 financial year.
The new accounting standard did not fairly and accurately reflect the fund’s contingency liability for outstanding and future claims, by some R300bn, according to the AG's opinion.
The RAF approached the Pretoria high court in January seeking to restrain the AG from disclosing her report and opinion to parliament, pending the review of the AG’s audit and report.
That application was dismissed in February and the AG’s report and opinion found their way to parliament.
The AG had sought to provide her audit report to the RAF on Friday.
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