Fraud-accused lawyer Zuko Nonxuba, whose firm lodged medical negligence claims worth nearly R1bn against the Western and Eastern Cape Health Departments – where he represented children left brain damaged by medical negligence but never paid them a cent – should be struck off the roll, says the Legal Practice Council.
Nonxuba is on trial for allegedly lodging more than R45m in fraudulent claims against the Eastern Cape Health Department, which has been left financially crippled by litigation being pursued against it.
News24 reports that after he pursued a failed litigation campaign to overturn his suspension, the LPC has applied for him to be struck from the roll of attorneys.
The council said Nonxuba transferred R348 845 000 from his severely disabled child clients’ trust account to his firm’s business account – and was “helping himself” to money meant for the care of those children.
Heartbreaking testimony from the mother of one of these children previously revealed how the little boy had been left severely ill and malnourished because she did not have enough money to buy food for him.
She only became aware Nonxuba had won a R13m medical negligence settlement for her son after being contacted by TV programme Carte Blanche.
The LPC now claims Nonxuba, on trial for fraud in two separate criminal cases, treated the multimillion-rand settlements intended for desperately poor children, left with cerebral palsy because of state negligence, “as his own money”.
It has also detailed how he allegedly tried to fake financial records and created a “fabricated” payment summary to convince the LPC he had, in fact, paid the money needed to fund the children’s care.
Bank account statements showed the transfers Nonxuba recorded had not actually happened, LPC chairperson Janine Myburgh told the Western Cape High Court.
Worse still, Nonxuba’s firm provided “redacted” bank statements to the LPC in an apparent bid to conceal the fact he was the direct beneficiary of certain of these transfers.
“It is respectfully submitted… inconceivable, that Nonxuba was entitled to the trust funds amounting to R348 845 000 transferred in perfectly round amounts on 759 occasions since January 2017.
"It is therefore submitted that he has misappropriated astonishingly large amounts of funds from his clients over an extended period of time,” Myburgh said.
Nonxuba had also ailed to comply with at least five court orders requiring him to set up trusts “and to pay to the trustees the funds due to them”.
While the desperately poor and vulnerable children suffered and sometimes died without ever receiving proper care, deeds records show Nonxuba and his wife built up an impressive property portfolio countrywide.
Those may well be targeted in a separate sequestration application brought against Nonxuba, his wife and his law firm by 11 disadvantaged and predominantly rural-based mothers who claim Nonxuba stole R198m in medical negligence claims from their severely disabled children.
One mother detailed how she and other mothers of these 11 children, who were left with cerebral palsy after being negligently deprived of oxygen during birth, received only between R150 000 and R300 000 from Nonxuba – and had no idea he had obtained multimillion-rand settlements that were sometimes more than 172 times the amounts he gave them.
All of these women live in the Eastern Cape’s rural areas, with little access to education or even the most basic services, such as water, electricity or healthcare. Many are unemployed.
Nonxuba told her and the others that the amounts he had paid them was “the full portion” due to them.
The mothers also had no idea he had been ordered to register trusts for each of their children, to provide carefully managed funding for their care.
A forensic investigation by the Eastern Cape Treasury revealed Nonxuba and his firm “could not account for the trust funds they ought to have held on behalf of five minor children awarded damages … in medical negligence cases against the Executive Council of Health of the Eastern Cape Provincial Health Department”.
In an apparent bid to evade responsibility for that failure, Nonxuba and his firm “fabricated accounting records … and committed perjury”, Myburgh said in court papers.
Nonxuba initially claimed he could not pay three of the mothers suing him because their claims were being investigated by the Special Investigating Unit.
He also claimed another of the severely disabled children, on whose behalf he obtained a R24m settlement from the Eastern Cape Health Department in 2018 but never paid, had died on 9 June 2019, so therefore, he contended, the child’s mother was not entitled to any money.
He did not, however, explain what had happened to the R24m settlement.
Myburgh said he “has acted unconscionably and disgracefully, and brought the profession into disrepute and …is dishonest”, and that it was “in the interests of his clients, the court, the public and the profession, that his name be struck from the roll of attorneys”.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Slow process to hold medico-legal lawyers accountable for fraud
Eastern Cape Health interdicts attorney’s R79m payout move
Lawyers probed over millions due to disabled children