On Monday Schabir Shaik took his fight to stay out of jail for corruption to Bloemfontein's Supreme Court of Appeals.

In a 500-page petition to the country's top judges, Shaik is appealing against both his conviction and sentence on the fraud charge and one of the corruption charges. He is also petitioning the Appeal Court for leave to appeal on the main charge of corruption, where the court found he and former deputy president Jacob Zuma had a "generally corrupt" relationship.

Earlier this year, Durban High Court trial judge Hilary Squires granted Shaik leave to appeal against his conviction for fraud, as well as one of the corruption charges.

He was denied leave to appeal on the main corruption charge, however, although his company Nkobi Investments was granted the application.

On Monday the 500-page petition, which includes Shaik's founding affidavit, was lodged in the appeals court in Bloemfontein.

A copy of the application was also lodged with the registrar of the Durban High Court. The National Director of Public Prosecutions was also served with a set of papers and will have until September 26 to oppose it. Shaik will then have 10 days to reply. Once all the paperwork has been completed, an administrative process will be followed before it goes before a judge.

Earlier this year, Shaik was convicted and sentenced by Squires on two counts of corruption and one count of fraud.

The main count of corruption relates to the "generally corrupt" relationship he was found to have had with former deputy president Jacob Zuma, and the payments Shaik made to Zuma of more than R1,2-million. 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 R500 000-a-year bribe for Zuma from French arms company, Thomson-CSF. The bribe was to be 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.

Squires denied Shaik leave to appeal on the main count of corruption, but granted his company, Nkobi Investments, leave to appeal, on the basis that the state could not conclusively prove that the company had made payments to benefit Zuma. On the fraud charge, Shaik was granted leave to appeal only against his conviction. This was granted because it was allowed that another court might find that the state had not proved beyond reasonable doubt that Shaik had been present at the meeting where the write-off was discussed.

Shaik was also granted leave to appeal against his conviction on 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.

Shaik wants the appeal court to extend the grounds of his appeal and not to limit it as set out by Squires.

The basis of Shaik's application is the same as his plea explanation and his evidence in the trial. The application is highly technical in its analysis of the evidence before Squires on the write-off of the loan and the encrypted fax.

Regarding the "generally corrupt" relationship, Shaik reiterated that the payments to Zuma were made out of a long-standing friendship and camaraderie between them.

"There was no evidence placed before the court that Zuma allowed me to accord specific prominence to my relationship with him as alleged, or that Zuma had the power or duty to prevent me from referring to our relationship," Shaik said in his application.

"For the sake of completeness, I must also state that the evidence did not establish that Zuma knew that our relationship was referred to in promotional material, correspondence and in personal contacts.

"Furthermore, I hardly needed to pay Zuma to allow me to state that we had a special relationship - that relationship is a fact. What is important is that I did not "buy" that relationship. It existed long before I decided to financially assist Zuma at the beginning of 1997..."

With acknowledgements to Monica Laganparsad and the Daily News.