offer the ANC shares in his companies, an offer rejected by the ANC in 1995. Transport contracts Under Mac Maharaj, who was Minister of Transport from 1994 to 1999, the Department of Transport granted a R264-million contract to Prodiba, a consortium of companies which included a stake for Thomson-CSF (now Thales) and a 33 per cent stake for an Nkobi Holdings subsidiary called KobiTech. The contract was to produce South African driving licenses in a new card format and it was cancelled in 2013, although KobiTech was expelled from the consortium before then in 2007. During Maharaj's tenure, another major contract – dealing with upgrades to the N3 highway – was granted to another consortium, the N3 Toll Road Consortium, of which Nkobi was a member. The Scorpions investigated Maharaj for several years on suspicion that the transport contracts had been granted improperly. Arms Deal contracts Shaik's relationship with Thomson-CSF extended beyond their partnership in the driving license consortium. Nkobi Investments owned shares in Thomson-CSF and in Thomson-CSF Holdings, a joint venture with Thomson incorporated inside South Africa. He also had a significant stake in Altech Defence Systems (ADS, later renamed African Defence Systems), which Thomson-CSF acquired between April 1998 and February 1999. In the latter half of the 1990s, Shaik held directorships at Thomson-CSF, Thomson-CSF Holdings, Nkobi Holdings, Nkobi Investments, and ADS. Shaik thus acquired a substantial interest in the 1999 Arms Deal, a major defence procurement project of the South African government: both Thomson and ADS submitted bids for several defence contracts under the deal. Ultimately, when the deal was finalised in 1999, both companies were awarded subcontracts for the four Valour-class frigates which were to be procured for the South African Navy – in the case of Thomson-CSF, the subcontract was to provide the combat suites for the frigates. Relationship to Jacob Zuma Shaik was a personal friend of Jacob Zuma, an ANC stalwart who had known Shaik and his brothers during apartheid and who was appointed Deputy President of South Africa in 1999. In 2002, a Zuma spokesman said that their friendship was rooted in their shared experiences in the ANC in the 1980s. By that time, Shaik was also Zuma's personal financial adviser. In May 2002, Shaik appeared in court on charges that he illegally possessed classified minutes of President Thabo Mbeki's cabinet; the documents were seized in a Scorpions raid. He had a long-standing