Durban : As he gets up today, businessman Schabir Shaik faces three minimum sentences of 15 years each for the crimes the high court says he has committed.

That is 15 years for bribing the deputy president, Jacob Zuma; 15 years for the illegal write-off of money in his companies' books, partially to hide payments to Zuma; and 15 years for brokering a bribe agreement between French arms company Thomson-CSF and Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

As the convictions attracting these sentences were read out, Shaik sat alone with his shock and grief, isolating himself, physically shrinking from those who wanted to touch him. His brothers looked shocked. Some members of his family wept.

But if anything, the verdict had been expected.

As Justice Hilary Squires made his thoughts on the matter clear on Wednesday, Shaik turned to his brothers and whispered out of the corner of his mouth: "I'm f****d."

Even so, it clearly came as a shock to him to hear Judge Squires pronounce the word "guilty" three times.

At least he was spared the humiliation of walking down the seven steps to the holding cells. He waited in court while his attorney, Reeves Parsee, went to pay his R100 000 bail with a trust cheque.

This will be Shaik's bail until he is sentenced. Shaik has also agreed to hand over his passport to chief investigator Johan du Plooy this morning.

During efforts to pay Shaik's bail, which apparently required the presence of a group of people, a thief sneaked into the stenographers' office and stole a cellphone. He got away.

The man convicted of bribing the deputy president did not. After duly being released on bail, he went across the road to a restaurant where he had fish and a little chat with his family before returning to court.

"There are strange aspects of this case, that we do not understand, sweetheart. It troubles me," Shaik told this reporter.

"Will you come visit me in prison?"

He seemed to be dealing much better, physically, with adversity than the uncertainty. His eyes were clear, his palms were dry and he seemed to be at peace with himself, even if his personal struggle was far from over.

Shaik, who had brought his spiritual advisers to court for the past week, proceeded to ask for forgiveness for offending people during the trial.

His conciliatory attitude seemed to have set in on Tuesday, when he approached lead prosecutor Billy Downer, SC, and gave him a hug.

Outside the court, he said: "I walk in the light of my Lord. I am innocent. I will hold that view till the day that I meet Him.

"Don't lose faith in our Lord, because I don't."

Shaik has no previous convictions.

But the guilty verdict, it seems, is just the start of his troubles. Downer said yesterday that the prosecution had been given permission to institute an inquiry, to be presided over by Judge Squires, to decide on the confiscation of Shaik's assets as "proceeds of crime".

It is believed Shaik's net worth is around R50 million - which means there is a lot to be confiscated.

Members of the Assets Forfeiture Unit have been here since the start of the judgment.

Downer and Shaik's lead counsel, Francois van Zyl, are to discuss the format of this inquiry.

When the court convenes tomorrow, the state is to lead expert evidence on corruption from the Institute of Security Studies.

Characteristically, Van Zyl was quiet, refusing to disclose his and Shaik's future strategy.

He said, however, that he would ask for an adjournment until Tuesday because he needed "to investigate" the position of the corporate accused who had been convicted.

And so, after a difficult day, around 3.30pm Shaik left the high court here as a convicted man - a little disappointed, a little sad and a lifetime removed from the man who skipped down the passage of the building shouting to all who wished to hear: "Don't trust the French."

With acknowledgements to Estelle Ellis and the Cape Times.