Defence advocate Francois van Zyl has questioned the independence of a forensic audit report presented to the court by state witness Johan van der Walt in the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial in Durban.

van der Walt's lengthy report was commissioned by the Scorpions and details the accounts of Shaik and his Nkobi group of companies as well as the finances of Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

Shaik's two charges of fraud and one of corruption include an alleged attempt to solicit a bribe of R500 000 a year for Zuma in exchange for protection for a French arms company during investigations into irregularities surrounding the government's controversial multi-billion rand arms deal.

van Zyl asked Van der Walt if he was being paid by the state for his report. *1

van der Walt replied: "Somebody has to pay me... I'm not contributing towards charity."

He said any other independent forensic expert would have come to the same conclusions he had if asked to perform a similar probe.

van der Walt said he and his KPMG team were paid on an hourly basis for their work. *2

van Zyl finished his cross examination of van der Walt on Monday morning.

van der Walt has been in the witness box for just over three weeks.

State advocate Billy Downer afterwards asked van der Walt to clarify some of the issues raised during cross examination.

The trial continues.

With acknowledgement to Sapa.

*1 This must take the cherry on top of the cake for being the dumbest question of the year. van der Walt is a expert witness. Expert witnesses get paid for their time effort into the investigation and giving of evidence.

*2 van der Walt's team consisted of 13 investigators and himself and they worked for somewhere between two and three years on their investigation, i.e. from September 2001 when the investigation terms of reference was issued to April 2004 when the first draft forensic report was externally issued).

One wonders what the KPMG board of directors would say when approached to offer their effort as a charitable donation.

It would be alot easier to get the donation sub-committee of the board of directors of Thales International, consisting of Yann de Jomaron, Alain Thetard and ably chaired by Jean-Paul Perrier, to make a donation to the forensic fund.