The fraud trial of former ANC chief whip in Parliament, Mnyamezeli Booi, will be delayed yet again, a prosecutor said on Friday.

Booi, the only MP left standing in the parliamentary travel voucher fraud affair, is scheduled to go on trial in the Cape Town Regional Court on 1 June.

However Scorpions prosecutor Jannie van Vuuren told a Cape High Court judge that there would be a postponement instead, as he had been told that Booi's senior counsel, Jan Heunis, was withdrawing.

Van Vuuren was speaking during argument on an application for the case against four travel agents allegedly implicated in the fraud, to be removed from the roll.

Judgment in that matter was reserved to 2 June.

Heunis told Sapa that he had not withdrawn, but that he was no longer "on brief".

Booi, who was this week named to chair the National Assembly's defence committee, said he did not know where Van Vuuren got his information.

"I've not done anything yet that indicates that. I think he was having his own thing," he said.

"I'm meeting my lawyers tomorrow. I haven't made any decision yet."

Booi's trial was to have started in September last year, but he applied for a postponement so that he could access a forensic audit report supposed to be prepared for the high court travel agents.

Magistrate Michelle Adams set the trial for 9 February, to run to the 27th of the month.

However at a subsequent appearance the trial date was shifted to 1 June, set down for two weeks.

Booi, who first appeared in court in February 2005, faces a single fraud charge, but it entails multiple transactions, involving R140 000.

About 30 other MPs have concluded plea agreements with the Scorpions.

The Democratic Alliance's leader in Parliament, Athol Trollip, said on Friday that the ANC's selection of Booi and three former Travelgate accused as committee chairs showed the party's moral bankruptcy.

Chairpersons of portfolio committees played a critical role in holding the executive to account and should be beyond reproach, not have a "tainted ethical record", he said in a statement.

Ruth Bhengu, Barbara Thompson and Beauty Dlulane, all of whom were convicted following plea agreements, have been chosen to chair the transport committee; the women, youth, children and disabled committee; and the women's caucus respectively.

Trollip said this made a mockery of ANC president Jacob Zuma's claim during the election campaign that the ANC did not tolerate corruption.

Thompson and Dlulane pleaded guilty to fraud in 2006, and Bhengu in 2005.

Dlulane's case involved R289 000.

They were sentenced to fines and suspended jail terms.

Sapa

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