Durban - "I am not interested in the ministers," counsel for businessman Schabir Shaik has said in the high court here.

Francois van Zyl, SC, was speaking yesterday to a former accountant of the Nkobi group of companies, Celia Bester, who had claimed Shaik paid bribes in cash to "ministers" and used "creative accounting" to make the amounts disappear in the group's books.

Bester was giving evidence for a second day against her former boss, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of corruption and fraud.

She has said one of the reasons for her decision to resign in late 1999 was that hundreds of thousands of rand in three loan accounts were written off against "development costs", although none had been involved.

Questioned by Van Zyl, she acknowledged she had resigned "provisionally" earlier that year.

Van Zyl said Shaik would tell the court he had not paid bribes.

He told Bester she had inferred that money paid to Deputy President Jacob Zuma had been a bribe. She had not taken into account that Zuma had signed an acknowledgement of debt and had a loan agreement with Shaik. Zuma had repaid some money, Van Zyl said.

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

Van Zyl: "I am not interested in the ministers."

Bester said she regarded the money paid to Zuma as a bribe because the only contribution Nkobi had made to a certain deal was "political connectivity".

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

The court has in its possession a financial statement showing at least five payments, with the initials MM written - allegedly by Shaik - beside them. Other notes on the statement say "Inv. MM invoices Flisane Inv".

Flisane is apparently the travel company owned by the wife of Mac Maharaj, who was transport minister at the time that an Nkobi subsidiary, Pro Con Africa, won a tender for the N3 toll road.

With acknowledgements to Estelle Ellis and the Cape Times.