French arms company Thomson offered to help the Scorpions wrap up the bribery investigation against Durban businessman Schabir Shaik and Deputy President Jacob Zuma to "facilitate" the expansion of its business interests in South Africa.

This was the testimony by former State advocate and one of the leading figures in the arms deal investigation, Gerda Ferreira, in the Durban High Court yesterday. She was one of the final State witnesses called in the corruption and fraud trial of Shaik, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

However, the lead prosecutor in the case against Shaik, Billy Downer SC, told the court the State believe the evidence offered on this occasion to be false.

At the time there were two warrants out for the former CEO of Thomson in South Africa, Alain Thetard's arrest - one for lying under oath and one for bribery. He was, however, no longer in the country.

Ferreira, who left the National Prosecuting Authority in 2003, and is now employed by Nedbank, gave evidence on the first day of the trial after a six-week break.

She explained how her time as arms deal investigator was filled with secret meetings in coffee shops, working late at night to take an affidavit from a scared witness and faxes arriving offering unexpected help in their investigation.

At that stage, she explained, their mission was to obtain one document - a handwritten note setting out the conditions of a R1-million bribe agreed on between Thetard, Shaik and Zuma.

Ferreira said she made contact with Thetard's former secretary Sue Delique after she had spoken to two auditors of Arthur Anderson whom Delique had taken into her confidence about the note.

"She was not interested in talking to me. She slammed the phone down while I was talking to her. Later she phoned me back. She said she might still have it (the handwritten note setting out the alleged bribe agreement). She promised to look for it, but wanted an undertaking that she will not be asked to testify. I tried to convince her to show me the document. When she agreed I was on my way to Cape Town. She refused to speak to another member of the investigation team. I had to convince her to help us."

"After I returned, I tried to find her for 10 days. Finally she phoned me back. She said she had lost the document. She explained that she had been retrenched and had the document in a briefcase. She said she forgot the briefcase in a supermarket and it was either lost or stolen."

"Eventually she agreed to meet with me. She insisted that we meet at a coffee shop. She told me that the document had been stolen. I convinced her to try and help explain the structure of Thomson to us. Delique then re-discovered the handwritten note from which she typed the fax. She then made an affidavit. She insisted that it be done after hours. She said she was scared. She asked us to stop the investigation."

Ferreira said no copies of the fax showed up during search and seizure operations in France, Mauritius or South Africa.

She also detailed to the court some of their efforts to get Thetard to co-operate with them. At one stage they agreed not to arrest Thetard for the time that he was in the country to answer their questions, but Thetard refused to give evidence or to come to South Africa.

Then, out of the blue, Ferreira explained, she received a fax. The fax contained an explanation of what happened at the meeting between Shaik, Zuma and Thetard on March 11 2003.

Downer said they are only leading evidence about the explanation to support their case that Thetard was lying about the meeting.

"We do not tender this document as the truth. In fact we do as the complete opposite. It is our case that Thetard was lying and that what he said is at odds with the version put forward by Shaik."

In his explanation, Thetard said that he did have a meeting with Zuma at his official residence. He said he "had not received any request emanating from highly placed State personalities..." but have received numerous requests from Shaik to finance the development of his firms.

"I could have wondered about the real causes regarding such demands, taking into account the local context. Today I consider that these requests could only be justified by company management."

With acknowledgements to Estelle Ellis and the Pretoria News.