Businessman Schabir Shaik has been adept at winning contracts in a variety of sectors, including transport and the arms industry, but when it comes to the tourism industry, he seems to be cursed.

Shaik said in an interview that he had for some time been negotiating a multimillion-rand deal with Singapore-based Banyan Tree group to establish a number of resorts in SA.

The Banyan Tree group focuses on small, high-luxury resort hotels all over Asia, with resorts in Thailand, the Maldives, Indonesia and China. It develops resorts featuring thatched huts, endless beaches and steaming spas.

Shaik met representatives of the group a few years ago in Phuket. They concluded that the concept would work in SA, and that the group could be expanded to SA. After negotiations, heads of agreement were reached.

Shaik says that the day he and lawyers were busy signing memorandums of understanding, the Scorpions struck in SA, demanding documents. While taking crisis calls from SA, he managed to work out an agreement with the Banyan Tree group.

A few weeks later he had a call from one of the group's executives who told him: "Shaik, my wife says you are a super-duper guy, but are you the same guy I see on CNN?"

The group then came to an agreement to hold off while making its own inquiries, and later came back and said all systems on the deal with Shaik were poised to go.

Shaik completed detailed business plans, full shareholders agreements, began investing in infrastructure and negotiating with property sellers.

Shaik's group put in a "huge bid" to the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), which evidently considered the proposals in detail. IDC representatives did full due-diligence studies on the plans, visited all proposed sites and put the proposal to the IDC's executive committee.

But no sooner had the executive committee cleared the plan than the Sunday Times published a report detailing a series of transfers from Shaik's accounts to the bank accounts of former transport minister Mac Maharaj.

The IDC has put the proposals on ice pending the outcome of investigations.

Shaik has the good grace to laugh about these setbacks, which seem to occur just as his plans to enter tourism business begin to gather momentum. But beneath the low comedy involved, the consequences of the series of allegations against Shaik are clearly beginning to take their toll. The incidents illustrate how harmful to Shaik's apparently ambitious and widespread business the claims of corruption have become, and it is clearly beginning to hurt.

Shaik says he has objected to the IDC, saying that government ministers have defended him and rejected all of the allegations.

He has charged that the IDC is taking a "political view. I thought I was innocent until proven guilty."

With acknowledgements to Tim Cohen and Business Day.