Johannesburg - A defiant Mac Maharaj, the former transport minister and FirstRand director, yesterday lashed out at the Scorpions, claiming that "someone" in the law enforcement agency was illegally "leaking" information about his financial affairs, causing great suffering to him and his family.

He made his remarks after he was cleared on allegations of bribery and corruption relating to toll road and other state contracts by an investigating team of accountants and lawyers appointed by FirstRand.

Maharaj, who earned R1 million a year as a non-executive director of FirstRand, resigned just before the release of the report yesterday.

The Scorpions have been investigating Maharaj and his relationship with businessman Schabir Shaik for 17 months.

Maharaj said yesterday no criminal charges would be brought against him that could be sustained in a court of law.

He added that he had resigned as he did not want the controversies around him to affect FirstRand.

The five-month inquiry - conducted by auditing firm Deloitte & Touche and attorneys Hofmeyer Herbstein & Gihwala - probed allegations that Maharaj had accepted bribes from Shaik while Maharaj was still minister of transport, and that Shaik had paid for a Maharaj family holiday to the US.

Shaik's business, Nkobi Holdings, is alleged to have benefited by winning lucrative toll road contracts and a driver's licence contract from the department of transport.

The inquiry found Shaik had paid R328 898 to Maharaj's wife Zarina for her services as an empowerment consultant to Nkobi Holdings.

The investigators found that "a number of questions remain unanswered" regarding her consultancy.

The investigators said Maharaj should have declared on the parliamentary register of members' interests the fact that Shaik had paid a hotel bill for the family visit to Disneyland.

Maharaj claims he paid the bill himself and there was nothing to declare on the register.

Maharaj, facing a barrage of hostile questions from the press yesterday, said his and his wife's lives had been hectic after 1994 and it had been difficult to adjust.

He had spent the previous 30 years as a revolutionary who had never earned a proper salary.

This was one reason he had been unable to produce documentary evidence of payments made to his family trust by one of Nkobi's subsidiaries.

He had no immediate plans for the future. Future conflicts of interest in his employment in the private sector seemed unavoidable.

He said he had been asked to re-enter the political arena, but was close to retirement age.

With acknowledgements to Edward West, Wiseman Khuzwayo and the Business Report.