Durban businessman Schabir Shaik could face the choice on Friday of going straight to jail rather than pursuing further avenues of appeal against his fraud and corruption conviction.

The Durban High Court is to give judgment on Friday morning on Shaik's bid for leave to appeal the guilty verdict and 15-year sentence.

Should judge Hilary Squires refuse the application, Shaik could opt to petition the chief justice for leave to challenge his conviction directly to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein.

His lawyer Reeves Parsee said on Wednesday that Shaik had not yet indicated what he would do in the event of a negative outcome on Friday.

"We will consider that when it happens. He has to give the instructions. The alternative would be for him to start serving his sentence."

Shaik is out on R100 000 bail.

On Tuesday, Shaik's legal team argued that friendship and camaraderie, not self-interest, were behind payments he had made to former deputy president Jacob Zuma.

Defence advocate Francois van Zyl argued that the men had an enduring friendship which was forged during the anti-apartheid struggle.

Shaik was convicted on two corruption charges and one of fraud, all involving financial dealings with Zuma. The deputy president was subsequently relieved of his duties and is to go on trial on related charges later this year.

The first corruption charge entailed a "generally corrupt relationship" between the two men and payments to Zuma to the tune of more than R1.2-million.

But Shaik contended that his Nkobi group of companies never got any government contract or tender as a result of the payments, and denied they were made to persuade Zuma to commit or omit any act in his favour.

On count two, the fraud charge, Van Zyl argued that Squires erred in rejecting Shaik's evidence that he had been unaware of the irregular writing off of loan accounts on the books of his Nkobi groups of companies. Some of this money went to Zuma.

The second corruption charge deals with Shaik's alleged attempts to secure a bribe of R500 000 a year for Zuma from French arms company Thomson-CSF in return for protection from a probe into South Africa's multi-billion-rand arms deal.

On this count, Van Zyl said the court should not have allowed as evidence an encrypted fax allegedly detailing a meeting to organise the deal.

He also argued that the sentence imposed on Shaik was "shockingly inappropriate".

Shaik was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment on each of the corruption charges and three years for fraud. But Squires ordered the three penalties to run concurrently.

In counter-argument, the state said there was no reasonable prospect of another court coming to a different conclusion on Squires' analysis of the evidence.

Leave to appeal should not be granted merely because a matter was controversial or had elicited uninformed public criticism, argued prosecutor Billy Downer.

Squires is to give judgment in Shaik's application at 10am on Friday.

With acknowledgements to Mariette le Roux, Sapa and Independent Online.