PROFESSOR Sarp Adali, the University of KwaZulu-Natal academic who co-supervised and acted as internal examiner of Chippy Shaik's controversial doctoral thesis, has stuck to his guns, saying the degree was above board, and, "if anything, very good".

He was speaking for the first time since allegations erupted that Shaik's 217-page mechanical engineering thesis was the result of cheating and was littered with errors.

The most shocking claim was that large sections of the dissertation were plagiarised.

Shaik was awarded his degree in 2003. He was the government's former arms procurement chief, and played a key role in sourcing suppliers for the country's controversy-ridden, R65 billion arms deal.

Shaik's thesis was supervised by Professor Viktor Verijenko, head of the school of mechanical engineering, and Adali.

Verijenko, presently on a year-long sabbatical in Australia, has resigned from the university.

The university said this week it was conducting an internal investigation into the allegations and was not prepared to comment further at this stage.

A source at the university said both Verijenko and Adali had been sent letters informing them of a pending disciplinary hearing. However, Adali said he had received no communication regarding plagiarism from the university.

"I haven't received a letter, nor have I been asked to testify, but it could be another week or so before I'm approached," he said.

Adali found the claims of plagiarism "surprising", saying Shaik co-authored conference and journal papers that formed most of his thesis. "I don't know where these claims come from. I examined the thesis from cover to cover. Each chapter of his thesis had co-authored conference papers. Shaik had various co-authors. I was co-author on some of them (papers) and Professor Verijenko was co-author on all."

He said it was common practice for students to co-author papers with their supervisors.

Dr Richard Young, who has a doctorate in electrical engineering and is managing director of an electronics engineering company which lost out on South Africa's arms deal, reportedly probed a library copy of Shaik's thesis. He has claimed the thesis contained many errors. But Adali has dismissed the allegations as exaggerated.

"I don't know what he's talking about. There are bound to be spelling errors in a 200-odd page document and flawed calculations can only be determined by an expert in that particular field."

Further intrigue that emerged this week was that Shaik's thesis was awarded, despite three missing pages. Adali rejected this allegation.

"This was a mistake … I read the thesis from cover to cover. An examiner's copy is different to that of the final copy. The missing pages are in the examiner's copy."

Young has also charged that it was a very short time for Shaik, who left the government in 2002, to do his doctorate by 2003. Adali described this claim as malicious and said Shaik registered for his PhD in July 1996.

"He worked as a full-time student when he resigned from his job in 2002. So it took him six-and-a-half years to complete his doctorate."

Adali and Verijenko are also accused, in a separate inquiry, of misconduct in connection with a R2.4 million contract Verijenko was awarded by Spoornet in his private capacity.

A university audit found that in 2003 a close corporation, of which Verijenko is sole member, represented itself as an agent of the university and entered a R2.4m research contract with Spoornet.

With acknowledgement to Noelene Barbeau and Cape Argus.