The state was stalling on details of the travel-voucher fraud charges faced by a current and a former MP, their defence teams claimed in the Cape Town Regional Court on Monday.
Lawyers acting for African National Congress (ANC) MP Mnyamezeli Booi and former Democratic Alliance MP Antoinette Versfeld said they wanted the court to rule prosecutors must provide full answers to their requests for further particulars.
Their application will be argued on October 9 and 10.
Advocate Craig Webster, acting for Versfeld, said the prosecutors’ reply to his request for further particulars had been ”wholly inadequate”, and Versfeld was still in the dark about the nature of the ”misrepresentation” she was accused of.
If these details were not supplied, he would ask the court to quash the charge.
Lead prosecutor Jannie van Vuuren said, however, that the request was unnecessary as both accused had been given access to all the documents held by the state, as well as to state investigators, and knew exactly where they stood.
”The accused have been furnished with a charge sheet that is fully adequate in providing them with the information they need to defend themselves,” he said.
”There’s nothing I can give her [Versfeld] more that she hasn’t got already.”
Van Vuuren also said it had recently come to investigators’ attention that in addition to exchanging parliamentary air-travel warrants for car rentals and hotel accommodation, Versfeld had also sought to exchange them for two sums of cash, totalling R10 000.
This would be added to the charge sheet.
Booi and Versfeld, who are charged with fraud, are both out on warning.
Their regional court appearance followed a Cape High Court ruling in March that their trials be separated from that of four travel agents also charged in the matter.
The agents go on trial in the high court on July 31.
A number of other MPs and travel agents — there were originally 31 accused — have entered into plea bargain agreements with the Scorpions. — Sapa