A foreign witness, who flew in on Wednesday from London to testify for the state at the Schabir Shaik corruption and fraud trial, shed very little light on the financial side of negotiations between American-based Symbol Technologies and Prodiba.

John Dover was called to provide background on a false non-distributable reserve that Shaik created against the loan account of Nkobi-IT to boost the value of Nkobi Holdings' shares.

The state hopes to prove that the non-distributable reserve was created shortly after Shaik met Dover via Prodiba, the company responsible for making the new driver's licence cards.

Furthermore an amount of over R1,2 million was irregularly written off in the Nkobi accounting records as development costs for Prodiba. This was the amount Shaik paid to Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

The fraud charge against Shaik relates to the fictitious non-distributable reserve and the irregular write-off.

While Dover could explain the business negotiations between Shaik and Symbol, he told the Durban High Court that he had no knowledge of a so-called work share right in Prodiba or the non-distributable reserve.

Dover was the manager of Symbol SA, which had developed a hand-held scanner to read the licence cards that his company hoped to sell to law enforcement agencies in South Africa.

When he met Shaik he saw an opportunity for Symbol to make a profit as the Prodiba contract was apparently worth R150 million over five years.

At one stage, Symbol intended buying shares in Kobitech, which is part of the Nkobi group, but the deal was put on hold by Symbol's international board of directors. The contract did not materialise.

Throughout his testimony, Dover admitted that he is not knowledgeable about the financial aspects of negotiations between Symbol and Prodiba. In fact, when shown certain documents relating to the discussions, he said he was "amazed".

Meanwhile, the cross-examination of KPMG forensic director Johan van der Walt, one of the state's key witnesses, resumed 30 minutes before the end of the day's proceedings.

During that time, Van der Walt admitted that he disregarded documents he deemed irrelevant to his investigation into Shaik's alleged fraudulent and corrupt financial affairs.

Shaik's advocate Francois van Zyl questioned Van der Walt on documents that he believes could prove that the money from Nelson Mandela could have originally been for the Development Africa project and not linked to Zuma's Nkandla village and that Zuma could have paid back Shaik R20 000 after Shaik paid his R21 000 ANC levy.

Van der Walt admitted that he did not view the documents, but said even if he did, he would have come to the same conclusion: that there were fraudulent and corrupt transactions between Shaik and Zuma.

Shaik is accused of paying Zuma at least R1,2 million for his influence in business deals.

With acknowledgements to Nivashni Nair and The Natal Witness.