The Lottery, the law firm and the minister: more questions than answers remain

Published by GroundUp.

We told the story last week of how law firm Ndobela Lamola Inc was commissioned to investigate corruption at the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) and how it failed to do its job — three times. We explained how the firm failed to spot obvious forgeries, failed to analyse financial statements properly, and failed to interview a key witness.

The firm submitted three incompetent reports. This is not just our view. It was the view of the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition (at the time) Rob Davies and his successor Ebrahim Patel when they, in effect, rejected the reports.

When two of those reports were compiled, Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola was one of Ndobela Lamola Inc’s two directors.

In response to our article, the NLC and Ndobela Lamola Inc published a joint statement that starts off by defending Minister Lamola, saying that he had no role in the investigation. They then made irrelevant claims and accusations of factual inaccuracy about things we did not even say.

The statement raises more questions than it answers:

1. Why has a public entity, the NLC, issued a joint statement — whose main purpose appears to be to defend a Cabinet minister — with a private law firm that it contracted to investigate it? Surely each of these three entities is responsible for explaining their own roles?


2. The statement doesn’t refute anything we wrote. It excuses the failure to spot forged documents and faulty financial statements by stating that the investigation was not a “forensic” one. But Minister Davies and Minister Patel referred to it as a forensic investigation and this was never denied. The investigation included an analysis of a hard drive, which implies it was forensic. Besides, the word “forensic” merely indicates that the investigation was supposed to be meticulous and scientific.


3. The statement says: “Furthermore, the amount of money that is alleged to have been paid to the law firm for the reported investigation is incorrect.” But we did not say how much the law firm was paid for the investigation. As we very clearly stated, the firm was paid R19-million over four years, some of which would have been for the investigation. Why won’t the NLC or Lamola Inc say how much the investigation cost?


4. We and two ministers have shown how the investigation was badly bungled. Ndobela Lamola Inc presumably made money from the investigation. Will it return the money it was paid?