Scorpions 'under pressure'

2004-12-06 16:13

Cape Town - The Scorpions are under "immense pressure" in the parliamentary travel scam case, a prosecutor with the unit, Jannie van Vuuren, said on Monday.

He was speaking in the Cape Town magistrate's court, where the cases of six travel agency accused were postponed to February 18 for further investigation, and a seventh, Soraya Beukes, to Friday for a fresh bail application.

The lawyers of the seven all objected to the postponements, most of them asking that the charges against their clients be provisionally withdrawn.

One of them, Anthony Arvan, appearing for Estelle Aggujaro of ITC, said: "The State must feel under pressure to complete its investigation. At the moment there's no pressure."

Van Vuuren said he strongly objected to this suggestion.

"There is immense pressure on the State... We have to make decisions on people that are in government, and that's not a joke. I can guarantee the court that's not a joke."

Have been working hard

And later he added: "I can assure the court and everybody present that we've been working extremely hard, and under pressure."

The Scorpions have promised that a number of MPs will join the travel agents in the dock, but have as yet made no arrests.

Van Vuuren said a forensic investigation was still under way, and that every aspect of the paper trail had to be followed up and checked.

Normally, a commercial crime case took two years to investigate, and the Masterbond case, which he had been involved in, took even longer.

Van Vuuren said the Scorpions had received "representations" on the case from a number of MPs, but declined to say what these were about.

"Eventually it'll come out in evidence," he said.

He also revealed that the Scorpions were still waiting to get the police docket on the case. The police launched the original investigation, carrying out a search and taking possession of a large number of documents.

The Scorpions took over the probe in June this year.

He told reporters after the hearing, however, that the Scorpions knew what was in the docket, and had in any case gathered their own evidence.

Bail withdrawn

Beukes's R100 000 bail was withdrawn in October when Scorpions investigators found she had lied about her reasons for wanting to leave the country on a business trip.

Beukes, owner of Business and Executive Travel, is currently in custody.

Her attorney Reuben Liddell said she wanted to apply afresh, and this time would take the opportunity to testify in support of her bid.

In his argument against the bid by Star Travel's Graham Geduldt for a provisional withdrawal of charges, Van Vuuren said the Scorpions had received information that Geduldt was involved in other fraud and theft even after his arrest.

It might be in the interests of justice to withdraw his bail if he was continuing to commit offences, he said.

Geduldt's bid was rejected along with all the others.

- SAPA