Former African National Congress (ANC) chief whip Tony Yengeni's appeal against a fraud conviction and four-year sentence is to be heard in the Pretoria High Court on Monday.

Yengeni is to contest the verdict on the grounds that he was deceived into pleading guilty by former national director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka.

In a sworn affidavit before the court, the politician claims Ngcuka reneged on a deal struck between the two of them and former Justice Minister Penuell Maduna at the latter's Johannesburg home in January 2003.

It was agreed that Yengeni would plead guilty to the lesser of the charges against him in exchange for a fine of R5 000.

I accepted the arrangement even though I still felt that I was innocent of all the charges," he says.

"I was satisfied that an agreement had been reached which would prevent a protracted trial."

But prosecutors pressed for a heavy sentence - resulting in his four-year jail term, Yengeni claims.

He accuses Ngcuka of never intending to honour the "agreement".

Yengeni says he attended a meeting of ANC officials in February 2003 to raise his concerns about Ngcuka's "conduct".

At that meeting, Maduna confirmed the existence of an agreement with Yengeni and suggested Ngcuka was not keeping his end of the bargain out of concern for his public integrity.

"It was agreed that Dr Maduna would meet with Mr Ngcuka to discuss the matter and insure (sic) that the agreement be implemented," the affidavit states.

"Despite the aforegoing, I can only draw the inference that Mr Ngcuka defied the agreement confirmed by Mr Maduna, reached at the meeting with the ANC officials."

Yengeni says he only considered pleading guilty because financial constraints would not have allowed him to finance a protracted trial.

"After the agreement was entered into between Mr Ngcuka, Minister Maduna and myself, I felt that I had no other option but to plead guilty to a watered down charge to dispose of the matter.

"I verily believed that I would receive a fine not exceeding R5 000."

Yengeni was sentenced in March 2003 after pleading guilty to defrauding Parliament by failing to disclose a near 50 percent discount he received on a luxury 4X4 Mercedes Benz.

He was initially charged with one count each of corruption and fraud.

The car deal was arranged by a representative of a bidder in government's arms acquisition process. Yengeni was then chairperson of Parliament's joint standing committee on defence, which oversaw the arms deal.

Yengeni resigned as a member of parliament two weeks before he was sentenced, and is out on R10 000 bail.

Yengeni maintains that his failure to declare the discount was "only a breach of a Parliamentary rule and did not constitute a criminal offence".

Ngcuka, now a businessman, denied in February having made any deal with Yengeni, and questioned why it had taken him two years to come up with this "distorted" version of events.

He confirmed through a spokesperson that a meeting took place between himself, Maduna and Yengeni. Yengeni raised the possibility of a plea and the "principle" of the matter was discussed.

The details of the deal were worked out between the prosecution and defence teams, Ngcuka said.

A court official said the hearing has been set down for one day.

With acknowledgements to Mariette le Roux and Independent Online.