Jacob Zuma is sticking to his guns that "political motives" are underpinning the state's efforts to investigate him for fraud and corruption despite prosecuting bosses taking court action over his allegations.

And Zuma's counsel, Kemp J Kemp SC, hinted in the Pretoria High Court yesterday that the former deputy president might well use his conspiracy claims to justify why he should not be the subject of further investigation.

Kemp was arguing that Zuma should be allowed to intervene in the state's request to obtain information from banks and lawyers in the UK.

According to Kemp, the purpose of such information was "to try to link Zuma to improper payments for purposes of prosecution". Zuma has previously described himself as "disturbed" by the state's renewed efforts to investigate him, months before the ANC decides who its next leader will be.

Attacking the state's efforts to gather potential evidence against him from both Mauritian and UK authorities, Zuma claims that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) "wished to engineer a situation whereby (I) would appear as a criminal/accused/suspect during the crucial period of the latter part of 2007".

Confronted by Zuma's refusal to back down from his "vexatious, fictitious and scandalous" claims, the state yesterday demanded that the Pretoria High Court throw his allegations out of court and order him to pay their legal bills as punishment.

"It would appear that my learned colleague is persisting with the allegation that political motives and undertones are driving the state's investigation," said state counsel Danie Dorfling SC.

Asking that Judge Willem van der Merwe visit and treat Zuma's claims with censure, Dorfling yesterday said the issues that Zuma raised were irrelevant to his current court action and "made absent of any concrete proof".

In an earlier response to Zuma's conspiracy claims, deputy director of public prosecutions Anton Steynberg stressed that the state "has no interest in Zuma's political ambitions".

Legal representatives for Zuma, French arms company Thint and the state will go head-to-head in the Supreme Court of Appeals in Bloemfontein next week, when they will wrangle over the search-and-seizure operations conducted by the Scorpions two years previously and used to obtain the 93 000 documents on which the state's as yet unrevealed forensic audit of Zuma's finances was based.

With acknowledgements to Karyn Maughan and The Star.