26 March 2024
The country’s highest court has dismissed Lesley Ramulifho’s application for leave to appeal, with costs. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks
“The Constitutional Court has considered the application for leave to appeal. It has concluded that the application must be dismissed with costs as it bears no reasonable prospects of success.”
With these two sentences the country’s highest court ended attorney Lesley Ramulifho’s efforts to stop the Legal Practice Council (LPC) from reconsidering a complaint against him.
In May 2020 GroundUp lodged a complaint with the Legal Practice Council against Ramulifho for forging documents in court papers filed against GroundUp.
Ramulifho is an attorney at the centre of allegations of corruption in the National Lotteries Commission. For years GroundUp has been exposing his involvement in dodgy dealings. Ramulifho has tried to stop GroundUp reporting on him. The court papers in which he forged documents are part of an application he lodged to force GroundUp to remove stories about him.
The LPC dismissed GroundUp’s complaint in October 2020.
Following a request for reasons for the LPC’s decision, GroundUp then took the LPC and Ramulifho to court in 2021 to force the LPC to properly consider the complaint.
In May 2023 the Gauteng High Court ruled in GroundUp’s favour and ordered the LPC to investigate Ramulifho.
Ramulifho then sought leave to appeal from the Gauteng High Court, which was rejected in September 2023.
Ramulifho then sought leave to appeal from the Supreme Court of Appeal. The request was dismissed on 1 February.
Ramulifho has no further appeals left.
The Legal Practice Council now has to properly investigate GroundUp’s complaint against Ramulifho, made almost four years ago.