The Durban entrepreneur Shabir Shaik had nothing to do with winning a prestigious contract to manage the fleet of the London Metropolitan Police. He publicly claimed credit for winning the contract recently to demonstrate that he did not need his South African political connections to get lucrative business deals.

Shaik, financial adviser to Deputy President Jacob Zuma, is embroiled in a major controversy over allegations that he paid kickbacks to Zuma and former transport minister Mac Maharaj to win arms and transport contracts.

On SABC Radio recently Shaik was asked whether the R265-million card-format driver's licence contract and the R2,5-billion contract for constructing the N3 toll-road which his company Nkobi Holdings had won, had anything to do with payments to Maharaj. Shaik denied this and said; "I need to appeal to the public and to yourself to see this, that there's a perception that we are widely successful because of these so-called political connectivities.

"But equally we are widely unsuccessful. The fleet management system that I've taken to minister Maharaj we didn't win. He had a separate body that evaluated that and it went to Imperial Holdings.

"I disagreed with Mr Maharaj on that. I had a company in London called Venson that does this entire service for the London Metropolitan Police. They've been nominated global fleet management company worldwide. And despite all these accolades and technology capacity we lost."

But though Shaik called Venson his company, he owns no part of Venson Group Plc, the UK-based fleet management company, according to the chairman of the company, Grant Scriven.

He made it clear Shaik played no part in the company winning its contract with the London Metropolitan Police. All of the directors of Venson Group Plc are British or Irish.

Scriven pointed out in an interview this week, that Venson has a joint venture with Shaik's company Nkobi in South Africa, called Kobi Venson, which is bidding for fleet management contracts in SA.

"Shaik has nothing to do with our UK operation," Scriven said.

"His role is that he is a black empowerment partner in South Africa and we (Venson) are looking for opportunities in South Africa. We have no contracts currently in South Africa, but have been looking for some for a while."

He confirmed that Venson are the market leaders in the UK and that since 1998 they have managed the fleet of the metropolitan police, which is a very prestigious contract. But he made it clear that Shaik played no part in winning this contract.

With acknowledgements to Elizma Nolte, Peter Fabricius and the Weekend Argus.