Cape Town - Mac Maharaj, the former transport minister, has responded to an audit report detailing alleged payments and gifts from businessman Schabir Shaik.

Shaik has, however, claimed the payments were for Zarina Maharaj, the former minister's wife, for services rendered as a consultant on gender equality to Shaik's company for four years.

After receiving the report last week of an independent inquiry, FirstRand gave Maharaj, a non-executive director at the banking group, a week to respond to the findings. The deadline was yesterday. FirstRand has yet to detail the outcome of its report or the response from Maharaj.

The four-month inquiry by attorneys Hofmeyr Herbstein & Gihwala and auditing firm Deloitte & Touche was prompted by media reports alleging that Shaik had made large payments to Maharaj and his wife after the transport ministry awarded lucrative licensing and toll road contracts to companies associated with Shaik.

The audit allegedly includes details of a Maharaj family holiday to Disneyland paid for by Shaik.

Shaik said yesterday he had paid Zarina Maharaj about R300 000 for four years of services as a consultant on gender equality. She had two masters degrees, one of them on gender equality, Shaik said.

Although Shaik's firm, Nkobi Holdings, was already an empowerment company, the addition of black women to his board would have counted as extra points in winning contracts, he said. In addition, Zarina had brought about many changes on gender equality.

Shaik said Maharaj would have had nothing to do with the award of the N3 toll road contract tender, in which Nkobi Holdings was a participant, as this was done by the National Roads Agency.

Shaik said Nkobi Holdings had been awarded only one of the four toll road tenders it had bid for.

Nkobi Holdings was also part of a consortium that lost the contract for the Maputo Corridor to Basil Read and French group Boygues, even though Nkobi was the only empowerment group to bid.

Nkobi Holdings contested the award, but a panel comprising Maharaj, his director-general, the Mozambican transport minister and his director-general did not rule in his favour. Nkobi Holdings also did not win a contract for the building of the Bakwena Platinum toll road.

Regarding the trip to Disneyland, Shaik said Nkobi had proposed a joint venture with Halliburton, one of the world's largest consulting engineering groups.

Shaik said he had been a friend of Maharaj for many years and had facilitated a meeting between Anwar Wiesa, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, who was closely involved with Halliburton, and Maharaj's son to conduct an assessment of Maharaj's son's willingness and ability to join MIT.

Maharaj had travelled to the US with his family to see Disneyland. Shaik said Maharaj had paid his hotel bill in cash, but some time after that Halliburton had presented Shaik with a R15 000 hotel bill.

He was convinced Maharaj had in fact paid the bill, Shaik said, but he did not wish to ruin his budding relationship with Halliburton, so he had paid the bill himself to eliminate the "nuisance value".

With acknowledgements to Edward West and the Business Report.