By Monica Laganparsad
Minutes relating to a meeting about South Africa's controversial arms deal and attended by President Thabo Mbeki and some cabinet ministers were found in the possession of Schabir Shaik, a bidder in the deal, the Durban regional court heard on Monday.
Shaik, arrested in November last year, appeared in court on charges of theft and contravening the Protection of Information Act.
The court heard that the minutes related to a meeting held by the submarine committee of the Strategic Defence Acquisition Programme on May 26, 1999.
According to the minutes - confiscated with other documents during a search of Shaik's premises last year - Mbeki, who was deputy president at the time, Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin, defence minister Joe Modise and Public Enterprise Minister Stella Sicau were at the meeting.
The chief arms negotiator J (Jay) Naidoo and chief of acquisitions, Shamin "Chippy"Shaik, brother of Schabir, were noted in the minutes as having been invited, the court heard.
Chippy Shaik, acquisition chief for the defence department, was suspended last year after a departmental disciplinary hearing found him guilty of illegally disclosing confidential information contained in the Auditor-General's draft report on the arms deal.
He appealed against the hearing and won.
According to Schabir Shaik's charge sheet, cabinet documents were also recovered during the raid on his premises by the Scorpions.
But on Monday Shaik's legal representative, Advocate Nirmal Singh, SC, argued that the "search was inadmissible" because when a warrant was obtained in the Durban High Court, insufficient evidence was placed before the judge at the time.
He said Shaik's constitutional rights had been infringed and that the warrant obtained was "not specific but general".
Shaik is the director of African Defence Systems (ADS) whose majority shareholder is a French defence company, Thales, previously known as Thompson CSF.
ADS is a partner in the South African corvette consortium which is supplying four corvettes to the South African Navy.
The matter was set down for trial but was postponed to allow the state to add new charges.
A date for argument of the inadmissibility of the search warrant and the documents is yet to be determined.
The trial was postponed until November 27.