KPMG forensic auditor Johan van der Walt on Wednesday admitted that he had disregarded some of the information at his disposal when compiling his audit report for the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial.

Van der Walt was commissioned by the Scorpions last year and said he was given access to a strongroom of documents to do his financial audit.

When he first entered the witness box in the Durban High Court two weeks ago he likened his job to putting together a puzzle from thousands of pieces jumbled together in a box. "Maybe some pieces are not there, but it doesn't affect the picture at the end of the day."

Shaik faces two charges of corruption and one of fraud relating to allegedly soliciting a R500 000 per annum bribe for deputy president Jacob Zuma in exchange for protection during investigations into arms deal irregularities.

Shaik has pleaded not guilty.

Under cross-examination on Wednesday Van der Walt said he had 259 000 documents at his disposal and had disregarded some of it based on his experience and investigative skills.

Two of those documents were affidavits. This included an affidavit by the chief executive officer of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, John Samuel, in which he explains that the R2 million Mandela gave Zuma was Mandela's personal money and not from the foundation.

Shaik's advocate Francois van Zyl said the money was for Development Africa and not for Zuma's Nkandla traditional village project as stated in Van der Walt's report.

The other affidavit was from a Mr Narsai which Van der Walt had not read because he was busy with his draft report at the time.

When telling the court about Zuma's cash outflows last week, Van der Walt said he had identified two payments totalling R20 000 to Shaik. He said both payments were for R10 000 and were made in September 1998 and January 1999.

Van Zyl said the money was a repayment for R21 000 in ANC levies Shaik had paid.

Van der Walt admitted that this was possible.

At one stage Van Zyl questioned why Zuma would want to pay Shaik if he was the one being bribed.

Van der Walt said any relationship could evolve over time and it was possible that the relationship between Zuma and Shaik started from friendship and evolved "into a different animal."

He said he could not exclude the possibility of a mutually beneficial financial relationship between the two *1.

Van der Walt said even if he had used the other information at his disposal he would have come to an alternative conclusion but with the same effect about the relationship between Zuma and Shaik.

Wednesday's proceedings started with the State's first international witness, John Dover, who met Shaik when he was based in South Africa with Symbol Technologie -- a billion dollar US company which invented the scanner that reads barcodes.

Dover, from the United Kingdom, was called to testify about the count of fraud against Shaik which involves the Prodiba project.

Prodiba, in which Shaik's Nkobi Holdings had a stake, is the group responsible for producing South Africa's credit-card-style driver's licences.

He told the court he had no knowledge of a workshare agreement between Nkobi Holdings and Prodiba. The State claims Shaik created a false non-distributable reserve against a Kobi IT (Nkobi subsidiary) loan account by using a non-existent workshare agreement to increase the value of shares in his company.

He allegedly also falsely wrote off 1,2 million rand as Prodiba Development costs.

However, Dover said an agreement between Symbol Technologies and Prodiba never materialised. The aim of negotiations was to get Symbol Technologies to provide the hand-held scanner which would enable officers to read licence cards on the roadside.

Dover said at the time of the negotiations he was aware that Shaik was an adviser to Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

Despite the allegations against Shaik the transport department renewed Prodiba's contract for another five years in October.*2

With ackowledgements to Wendy Jasson da Costa and Sapa.

*1 Of course there was a mutually beneficial financial relationship between the two parties. As the man said, "He said he has to carry a jar of Vaseline because he gets ****** (expletive deleted by editor) all the time, but that's okay because he gets what he wants and they get what they want" - sounds mutually beneficial to me.

*2 This scam costs each and every driver in this country with a valid driver's licence (there are a few million) about R250 every five years. It nets *3 Schabir Shaikh and his beneficiaries like Mac Maharaj, Jacob Zuma (a 2,5% occult shareholder in Nkobi Holdings via some nominee) and Yunis Shaikh (also an occult shareholder in Nkobi Holdings via The Workers College) about R100 million every five years.

*3 For students of Simplistic Accounting : not necessarily netts. We'll need another bloodhound to work this one out.