The Cape High Court will hear an urgent application by businessman Hugh Glenister on Tuesday for an interdict to bar Travelgate MPs from voting on the disbandment of the Scorpions.

"The matter is being heard today [Tuesday] at 3pm," Glenister's spokesperson, Jennifer Cohen, said in a statement.

"Ultimately, Glenister hopes the interdict will prevent a quorum required to vote on legislation, rendering the bills 'DOA — dead on arrival'."

Parliament's justice and safety and security committees approved two pieces of legislation for the disbandment of the crime-fighting unit on Monday.

The two bills are scheduled to come up for debate in the National Assembly on Thursday.

In August this year, Glenister told journalists at a Cape Town Press Club lunch that the application to the court would seek to have "220 members if not more" disqualified on the grounds of conflict of interest from voting the Scorpions out of existence.

In that month, his attorney sent two letters to then National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete, asking that MPs who had been investigated by the Scorpions in the Travelgate matter recuse themselves from consideration of the two bills that seek to shut down the unit.

The Speaker's office responded on 26 August, effectively rejecting Glenister's demands.

His statement on Tuesday ahead of the court hearing said he had a list of 147 MPs implicated in Travelgate.

"In addition to trying to exclude MPs with a conflict of interest from voting on the bills to disestablish the Scorpions, Glenister is trying to get a copy of the multi-party report and forensic audit prepared for the former Speaker of Parliament, linking the rest of the MPs not named in the document he has, who used other travel agencies to the fraud," said Cohen.

Sapa