Cape Town - MPs are likely to recommend to parliament that changes to the country's corruption legislation be expedited to close loopholes that may have hamstrung arms deal prosecutions.

This follows a meeting on Tuesday of the national assembly's justice committee, one of seven committees tasked with dealing with the multi-agency investigating team's 380-page forensic report into the arms deal.

The report was tabled last week and the committees have been given until December 6 to report back to parliament, although the standing committee on public accounts has sought an extension.

Committee chairperson Johnny de Lange (ANC) told MPs: "The last thing I am going to do is another investigation. That's not our job."

On the report and its findings, he said: "I don't expect you to do anything but note it. Parliament must make sure the recommendations are dealt with."

His view was shared by all parties present at the meeting, including the Democratic Party.

De Lange suggested one of the recommendations the committee could make was that changes to the Corruption Act of 1992 should be tabled in parliament as soon as possible.

The act had repealed several common law offences, including bribery, he said.

Although it was false that there were very few prosecutions under the act, there were big loopholes, and the legislation had been substantially rewritten by the national directorate of public prosecutions.

It was currently before an inter-ministerial committee and had not yet been tabled in parliament.

'Big gaps in the law'

De Lange said it was expected that the committee would meet at least once more during the recess period to deal with the report.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, De Lange said the Corruption Act impacted on a lot of the areas in the report.

"Our law does not exist in certain areas of corruption. There are big gaps in the law and it is very apposite that changes be introduced as soon as possible. We must try and get this process speeded up.

"There's clearly a gap and something must be done. The quicker it gets introduced, [it] will be the best response to where there are gaps."

For example, conflict of interest was a criminal offence, although this was not the case in South Africa.

The arms deal report found that defence force chief of acquisitions, Chippy Shaik, had acted with conflicting interests and failed to recuse himself properly from discussions involving companies in which his brother, Schabir, had an interest.

With acknowledgement to Sapa and News24.