MPs get travelgate indictment

2005-11-11 17:13

Cape Town - The serving and former MPs facing the music in the parliamentary travel scam case on Friday received a provisional indictment, which details fraud and alternative theft charges totalling R24m.

At the same time, a Cape Town magistrate turned up the heat on the Scorpions to finalise their preparation for the case.

Rejecting a bid by the State to have the matter formally transferred to the High Court for trial on July 31 next year - magistrate Hennie le Roux instead ordered that he be told why a massive forensic report - commissioned by the Scorpions was not yet available.

He said it was clear that the report was important for the defence teams and for any issues they wanted to raise ahead of the trial, and that if the explanation was not forthcoming by the next court date, January 31, they could apply for the matter to be scrapped from the roll.

'Immense forensic report'

Scorpions prosecutor Jannie van Vuuren had earlier told the court that the "investigation per se" was not yet complete, in the sense that the "immense" forensic report, which would form the bulk of the evidence in the case, had yet to be finalised.

The Scorpions were in the hands of the private forensic auditors to whom the matter had been outsourced, though he had set them a deadline.

He said the report covered the activities of five travel agents over a period of three to four years, and "millions and millions" of transactions.

Because the agents didn't necessarily keep records of their fraudulent activities, part of the investigations might for example involve asking the Southern Sun group whether particular people stayed at its hotels at any time for that period.

He said because South African Airways refused to do it, ten investigators had to go through a warehouse stacked with millions of old flight tickets to find original documents to match to computer records.

Documents to be available electronically

So far, the Scorpions had amassed 40 000 documents, which they intended to present as evidence, which was less than a third of the documentation that would eventually be made available to the defence.

The State would try to have the documents scanned so they were available electronically, failing which the defence teams would have to pay for a set of photocopies or bring their own copying machines to the Scorpions' offices.

He said he would try to provide the defence teams with the bulk of the evidence, if not everything, by December 15.

Van Vuuren said he was trying to arrange a "structured process" ahead of the trial, and was proposing a separate hearing before a "judicial officer" to deal with this issue after proper argument.

He said: "The last thing I'm trying to do with a joint trial is to force anybody to plea bargain."

- SAPA