On Monday convicted fraudster Schabir Shaik lodged his application for leave to appeal against his main corruption conviction, beating the 21-day deadline with hours to spare.

This is a last ditch attempt to have his main corruption conviction overturned.

The 21 days granted to the Durban businessman to lodge his petition for leave to appeal ends on Monday. The application, which consists of at least 500 pages, was lodged on Friday in the Durban High Court and is expected to be lodged in Bloemfontein later on Monday.

Its content will relate to Shaik's reasons on why he should be granted leave to appeal on the main corruption charge.

In July this year, Judge Hilary Squires denied Shaik leave to appeal on the main count of corruption in which he was found to "have a generally corrupt" relationship with former deputy president Jacob Zuma and the payments Shaik made to Zuma of more than R1,2-million.

He was granted leave to appeal on the fraud charge and the other corruption charge.

Squires granted Shaik's company Nkobi Investments leave to appeal on the basis that the state could not conclusively prove that the company made payments to benefit Zuma. On the fraud charge, Shaik was granted leave to appeal only against his conviction stating that another court might find that the state did not prove with reasonable doubt that Shaik was present at the meeting where the write-off was discussed.

He was also granted leave to appeal against the conviction of the second corruption charge which Squires said would test the admissibility of the encrypted fax and the weight the trial court had placed on it.

Squires also ordered that the appeals should be heard in the Supreme Court of Appeals in Bloemfontein.

He said Shaik had 21 days to petition the president of the appeal court on the main corruption charge and in the interim the fine would be deferred.

Shaik was convicted and sentenced by Squires earlier this year on two counts of corruption and one count of fraud. The fraud charge relates to the irregular write-off of loan accounts on the books of his Nkobi group of companies.

The second corruption charge relates to Shaik's attempts to secure a R5 000 000 a year bribe for Zuma from French arms company Thomson-CSF.

The bribe was in return for protection from a probe into the country's multi-billion rand arms deal.

Shaik was given the minimum sentence of 15 years on each count of corruption and three years for fraud. In total his group of companies was fined R4,2-million.

With acknowledgements to Monica Laganparsad and the Daily News.