What the state construed as an effort by Schabir Shaik to facilitate a bribe for Deputy President Jacob Zuma had been an effort to obtain a donation for an education trust.

This was stated yesterday by Durban businessman Shaik's counsel in the Durban High Court.

As he cross-examined forensic auditor Johan van der Walt, advocate Francois van Zyl SC explained what his client's version of events would be, giving Van der Walt a chance to comment on it.

In Van der Walt's report and in the indictment it is alleged that Shaik wrote a series of letters asking for payment of a R1-million bribe to Zuma. The state said the bribe was agreed on in March 2000.

But Van Zyl said his client would say that the letters had been written in an effort to get French arms dealers to pay an agreed donation to the Jacob Zuma Education Trust. (It was the same trust to which Nelson Mandela donated R1-million.)

Van Zyl said his client would say that Jean Paul Perrier, of Thales, the French arms company that had allegedly agreed to pay the bribe, had agreed to make the donation during a meeting held in May 2000 in Paris.

"It is a noble idea," Van der Walt commented, "but ... why is it (the education trust) not referred to (by name) in correspondence?"

Van Zyl said other correspondence construed by the state to be written to prompt the French into paying the bribe money had in fact dealt with a service-provider agreement set up between one of Shaik's companies and Thales.

The cross-examination of Van der Walt was interrupted yesterday to lead the evidence of the Mauritius police's Chief Inspector Pierre Coret.

Coret had taken part in authorised raids on the offices of Thales in Mauritius, after a request by the Scorpions.

Van Zyl said he had a document showing that authorities in Mauritius had agreed not to send 13 French documents to South Africa.

He said the defence would at a later stage attack the admissibility of the documents, if the state attempted to hand them in as evidence.

Also yesterday, Judge Hilary Squires said he was "inclined to dismiss" an application by the state to lead the evidence of Professor John Lennon via satellite link from Scotland.

Judge Squires considered the venue proposed by the state for the link-up as too small to be a court of law.

He also said he had not considered Van Zyl's legal-technical objections to the application, but would do so if the state could find a suitable venue and renew its application.

With acknowledgements to Estelle Ellis and The Star.