The state Monday (sic) took the first step towards the finishing line in the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial when prosecution leader advocate Billy Downer SC presented his final arguments to the Durban High Court.

Similar to his opening arguments, Downer began on a dramatic note, quoting Roman lawyer Cicero "O tempora, o mores!" (oh the times, oh the morals!).

"It was promised at the beginning of this trial, with apologies to Virgil, that the prosecution would concern an epic of arms and a man - "arma virumque cano". Unfortunately, the epic has proved to be anything but heroic," he began.

Thereafter Downer introduced Deputy President Jacob Zuma as one of the "other persons" in the epic when he described Shaik and Zuma's relationship as a "corrupt patronage".

"It is submitted that the state has proved, as it promised, that there are two processes that some bidders saw fit to follow in order to attempt to secure government contracts. The first is the system of formal tendering, the second being a parallel informal process of private contacts with persons influential in government," he explained.

He then told the court that Shaik knew Zuma was an influential person in government, therefore he paid him almost R1,2 million for his influence to secure business contracts for his Nkobi Group.

Zuma particularly helped Shaik resolve a dispute with French arms manufacturing company Thomson-CSF, which ultimately led to Nkobi's inclusion in ADS and a share in South Africa's multi-billion rands arms deal.

"It is submitted that by providing assistance to Shaik in the circumstances described above, Zuma, in contravention of his constitutional duties, at the very least exposed himself to a situation involving the risk of conflict between his official responsibilities and private interests and thus acted in neglect of his duties," Downer said.

He then referred to count 2, which relates to R1,2 million which was irregularly written off in the Nkobi accounting records under the description of development costs of Prodiba, which included Zuma payments. The amount was written off against a non-distributable reserve that was simultaneously created against a loan account of Kobi-IT. The write-off was misrepresented in Nkobi accounting records and did not conform with general accounting practices.

For most of his argument relating to count 3, which deals with an annual R500 000 alleged bribe which the state claims Shaik solicited from Thomson-CSF to Zuma in return for protection into arms deal investigations, Downer used overhead slides to explain the notorious encrypted fax.

His final arguments continue today.

With acknowledgements to Nivashni Nair and The Natal Witness.