This was what Shaik would tell the high court here, Francois van Zyl, SC, said as he continued his cross-examination of forensic auditor Johan van der Walt yesterday.

The indictment and Van der Walt's report on Shaik's financial dealings allege that Shaik wrote letters seeking payment of R1 million to Zuma in return for his protecting French arms company Thomson-CSF, later known as Thales, in the investigation into the arms deal.

Van Zyl said Shaik would say the letters were an effort to get the French to pay an agreed donation *1 to the Jacob Zuma Education Trust - to which Nelson Mandela had given R1m.

Shaik would also say that Jean Paul Perrier of Thales had agreed, at a meeting in May 2000 in Paris, to make the donation.

Shaik wrote to Alain Thetard, the Thales representative in South Africa, in August 2000, saying: "I have been trying to reach you for the past three weeks on matters of extreme importance. I have also raised a very important matter with Jean Paul Perrier which he had sanctioned, for implementation by yourself ... despite my several attempts to raise this issue ... you have continually ignored this concern."

Shaik had become embarrassed as the education trust was "gearing up for bursaries and had no funds", Van Zyl said.

Van der Walt: "It is a noble idea. But it would not have been regarded as a secret. It is something to be proud of. Why is it noreferred to (by name) in correspondence?"

Correspondence construed as trying to prompt the French into paying the money was in fact about a service provider agreement between a Shaik company and Thales.

Shaik would say he had realised he had used R900 000 of the R1m from Mandela intended for the Development Africa Trust and had arranged to repay it. "It was against this background that Shaik spoke to Thetard about the service provider agreement."

Shaik would say they had agreed to research projects in which Thales could invest, but the effort had been "costly, time-consuming" and was dropped.

Van der Walt said he had in his possession a letter in which Nkobi Holdings told its bank it was expecting a payment of R1m as "Thomson's commission".

"Nowhere was an indication given that the money was to leave Nkobi immediately and be used to pay Development Africa."

Van der Walt's cross-examination was interrupted to lead the evidence of Chief Inspector Pierre Coret, of Mauritius, who took part in authorised raids on Thales's office in Mauritius at the Scorpions' request.

Van Zyl said he had a letter showing Mauritian authorities had agreed not to send to SA 13 French documents seized by an Inspector Jugoo. Papers that Coret seized were also returned to Thales by order of court.

Van Zyl said if the state tried to hand the documents in as evidence, the defence would challenge their admissibility.

• Justice Hilary Squires said he was "inclined to dismiss" the state's application for a witness to testify by video link from Scotland. The proposed venue was too small to be a court of law.

With acknowledgements to Estelle Ellis and the Cape Times.

*1 If one was being asked for a donation, which normally involves giving away hard-earned money, in this case Thomson-CSF 's shareholders' money, why would Alain Thetard have got so excited about at last being able to meet Zuma.

If one is being asked for a donation, then why does it require that the Chairman of Thomson International, Jean-Paul Perrier, who is also the Vice Chairman of Thomson-CSF, based in Paris, have to fly out specially to first re-agree in May to making the donation, after it has already been agreed by his in-country director Alain Thetard in March, and then come back to the country to discuss the mechanics of actually paying the money.

These French Fat Cats only fly first class, which costs about R50 000 per pop all in from Paris to Durban and back. So giving away R250 000 costs a further R100 000 or so plus quite a few precious manhours on each 15 hour leg of each journey.

Then once one's donated the R250 000 or R500 000 per year or whatever for bursaries for less fortunate South Africans, then one normally crows very loudly about it from the closest soapbox, physical or digital.