"I am not interested in the ministers."

This is what Francois van Zyl, counsel for Durban businessman Schabir Shaik, told a former accountant of the Nkobi group of companies who has claimed that Shaik paid bribes in cash to "ministers" and then made the amounts disappear in the group's books through "creative accounting".

On Wednesday Celia Bester gave evidence for the second day against her ex-boss, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of corruption and fraud.

Among other things, she detailed the reasons why she could no longer work at Nkobi. She first said one of the triggers for her resignation in late 1999 had been when hundreds of thousands of rands in three loan accounts were written off against what was called "development costs", even though the deal referred to had generated no such thing.

On Wednesday, under cross-examination by Van Zyl, Bester admitted she would have left the company in any event as she had resigned "provisionally" earlier that year.

Van Zyl also made it clear that Shaik would tell the court he had never paid any bribes. Van Zyl said to Bester that she had drawn an inference that money paid to Deputy President Jacob Zuma had been a bribe.

He said she did so without taking into account that Zuma had signed an acknowledgement of debt, that there was a loan agreement between Shaik and Zuma, and that Zuma had paid some money back to Shaik.

"I am entitled to my opinion. We were paying ministers money, while Nkobi barely survived," Bester said.

"I am not interested in the ministers," Van Zyl said.

She explained that she saw the money paid to Zuma as bribe money, as the only contribution Nkobi had made to a certain deal was "political connectivity".

Bester admitted she had no knowledge of the acknowledgement of debt signed by Zuma or of the repayments or the revolving credit agreement.

"Mr Shaik said to me that they were friends. He said Zuma could not handle his finances because he had all of those wives.

He said he was Zuma's financial adviser."

She admitted to having said everything that came to mind when she was angry with Shaik, after he had stopped the payment of her final salary.

In the letter of resignation she wrote to Shaik, she had said: "If you as the financial adviser to (Jacob Zuma) are not transparent, heaven help South Africa when you formally return to politics."

"I saw it purely as bribe money," she had told Judge Hilary Squires on Tuesday.

"A lot of ministers received money that was just written off. It was always cash cheques. We got the whole Prodiba deal (for the conversion of South African driver's licences to the credit card format) through our political connectivity. There were no development costs."

But on Wednesday Van Zyl put it to Bester that she did not know what meetings between Shaik and auditor Paul Gering had been about.

Bester had alleged they planned the write-off funds, which eventually led to the fraud charge against Shaik.

"You don't know what these meetings were about," Van Zyl said. "You don't know who was there. You speculate if you say that they sat together and discussed the financial statements."

He said Shaik would say he had been advised that the write-off was above board and had no tax implications for the company.

The trial continues.

With acknowledgements to Estelle Ellis and The Mercury.