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Travelgate trial postponed
31/07/2007 12:52 - (SA)
Cape Town - The trial of the four travel agents still standing in the parliamentary travel voucher fraud case will start only next year, it emerged on Tuesday.
The four, Soraya Beukes, Mpho Lebelo, Graham Geduldt and Estelle Aggujaro, made a brief appearance in the Cape High Court for yet another postponement.
It emerged that the Legal Aid Board has yet to appoint a replacement advocate for Lebelo, and a forensic accountant for the defence.
Head of Cape Town's Justice Centre Cobus Esterhuizen told Judge Essa Moosa that because of the cost of hiring an expert, it had to go out on tender, a "cumbersome" process which could take three months.
22 pleaded guilty
He also said the board was waiting for an update from Lebelo on her financial situation.
Lead prosecutor Jannie van Vuuren said that according to his reading of the Public Finance Management Act it should be possible to short-circuit the tendering process.
He also said that Aggujaro's advocate gave notice to the board three months ago that he wanted a forensic expert.
"So somewhere someone is going very slowly, or not at all," he said.
Van Vuuren said the State had been ready since last year to go ahead with the trial.
Since the case was enrolled in the High Court in July last year with 29 accused, 22 of them - all current or former MPs - had pleaded guilty and one case had been conditionally withdrawn.
Two accused - Mnyamazeli Booi and Antoinette Versfeld - were referred to the regional court after a successful application for separation of trials from that of the agents.
Van Vuuren told the court he was extending a "final invitation" for plea bargains, saying the prosecution had invited the four accused to physically examine all the evidence, explained everything it could explain, and even offered to make its own forensic expert available to them.
"Every day we postpone this case the costs also mount up, on both sides," he said.
The advocates representing Beukes and Gedult said they did not have enough information on the details of the alleged offences to advise their clients on plea bargains, while Aggujaro's counsel said he had been instructed to proceed to trial.
Judge Moosa postponed the case to October 8 for a report-back to the court, and set February 5 as the provisional start of the trial.
The regional court trial of Versfeld and Booi is also likely to start only next year.
Van Vuuren told Sapa that since the beginning of the case, including lower court appearances, a total of 30 MPs and two travel agents had entered into plea bargains.
The State said in the plea bargain cases that MPs and agents fraudulently used parliamentary travel vouchers meant only for air travel to cover the costs of hotel accommodation, car rentals and other benefits.
Agents also allegedly booked and issued air tickets, then immediately cancelled them and claimed the tickets as if they were valid flights.
The fraud totalled some R24m.
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