The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) admitted on Tuesday that the imminent disbanding of the Scorpions and a sustained exodus of staff could seriously hamper ongoing arms deal-related investigations.

"We are losing people we cannot replace and that could really impact on one of these serious cases," Willie Hofmeyr, the deputy national director of public prosecutions, told Parliament's public accounts committee (Scopa).

"The dissolution of the DSO (Directorate of Special Operations) caused uncertainty. We are losing six people a month," he added.

The acting head of the NPA, Mokotedi Mpshe, told the committee he believed that the capacity to handle cases stemming from alleged corruption in the multi-billion rand arms deal would not be lost, but that investigations would take longer than expected.

"The investigation is not going to take a very short time. It is a concern but we from our side are doing all we can to make this process work."

According to Hofmeyr, 67 members of the DSO, or Scorpions, resigned over the past year.

The elite unit, which was formed in 2001, is about to be disbanded and assimilated into a new team fighting high-level crime -- the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation.

It is meant to take over the full caseload of the Scorpions but will report not to the NPA but to the police.

The Scorpions helped to put Tony Yengeni and Schabir Shaik behind bars for corruption linked to the arms deal, and are involved in the politically fraught graft case against African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma.

Neither Hofmeyr nor Mpshe indicated whether the departure of senior staff would have a direct impact on prosecuting Zuma, who is expected to request a permanent stay of prosecution when he appears in the Pietermaritzburg High Court in August.

Scopa heard a special submission from Independent Democrats leader, Patricia de Lille who alleged that it was not lack of investigators but a lack of political will stopping the NPA from prosecuting suspected arms deal fraudsters.

"The excuse of lack of capacity at this late stage is not true," she said.

"I think it is more a lack of political will and political interference.

Now you are going to disappear. The DSO going is going to be the final excuse not to investigate."

Mpshe acknowledged that the NPA has had difficulty in obtaining and responding to a request from Germany for help in probing alleged misconduct by ThyssenKrupp, the Dusseldorf-based company that supplied South Africa with four corvette warships, because the document was still in the hands of the justice ministry.

He said the NPA first asked the ministry to pass on the letter from German prosecutors in 2007, and deliberately asked again after Enver Surty replaced Brigitte Mabandla as justice minister late last year.

"The information we got was that a request came from Germany via the department of justice and that it was sent back to Germany for some clarification.

"We don't know whether it has come back to the DG (director general of justice). So we still have not received (it) to date."

He said the NPA's knowledge of the German request for assistance was based on what it had read in the newspapers.

It has been reported that the prosecuting authorities in Dusseldorf have since abandoned their probe because of lack of co-operation from their South African counterparts *1.

With acknowledgements to Sapa.