Durban businessman Schabir Shaik says he generally paid only a tiny percentage of his company's turnover to Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

But forensic auditor Johan van der Walt was not impressed in proceedings during Shaik's Durban High Court trial yesterday, saying a company's turnover meant little - but its bank accounts a lot.

Shaik has pleaded not guilty to charges of corruption and fraud.

Van der Walt spent his 16th day in the witness box yesterday.

Advocate Francois Van Zyl SC, for Shaik, indicated he would finish his cross-examination of Van der Walt on Monday.

Van Zyl said he would dispute Van der Walt's evidence that the financial existence of Shaik's Nkobi group of companies had been threatened by the payments to Zuma.

He produced a document explaining that Shaik had paid at most 6% of the Nkobi group's turnover to Zuma.

Turnover

"This reflects the group turnover," Van der Walt said.

"One can have R1 billion turnover and still have an overdraft. If you don't have the money, you can't operate."

Van Zyl also said that Shaik had built up the Nkobi group to an operation with an annual turnover of R23 million.

"If the money is not in the bank, there is a problem," Van der Walt said.

Van Zyl further said that Shaik would testify that as far as he knew, Zuma had been in a much stronger financial position than was reflected in Van der Walt's evidence.

Van der Walt replied that his evidence had been given to show that Zuma had received a number of benefits through payments from Shaik, including "being rescued from sequestration".

Van Zyl also said that Shaik would tell the court that his financial director, Colin Isaacs, was a chartered accountant and that he had trusted the value judgments of Isaacs and the company's auditors to ensure that nothing was wrong in the books.

He further said that when Shaik had been told that there was a problem in the books, he had had it corrected.

"Yes, but if one looks at Nkobi's books it was Shaik who benefited directly and indirectly from the write-off," Van der Walt replied.

"If I was the director of a company and R750 000 suddenly disappeared from my books, I would seriously question the financial statements," he said.

The trial resumes on Monday.

Judge Hilary Squires is presiding.

With acknowledgements to Estelle Ellis and The Mercury.