Bruce Whitfield interviews Rob Rose, editor of the Financial Mail and author of “Steinheist”.
“The Steinhoff crash wiped over R200 billion from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, wiped out more than half of tycoon Christo Wiese’s wealth and brought down the pension funds of millions of ordinary South Africans.”
That’s the Steinhoff scandal in a nutshell, as summarized on the back cover of Rob Rose’s book “Steinheist: Markus Jooste, Steinhoff and SA’s Biggest Corporate Fraud.”
RELATED: Steinhoff: ‘I give up hope that we will ever see people brought to justice’
On Tuesday, the Western Cape High Court granted two media outlets (AmaBhungane and Tiso Blackstar) access to the forensic report into accounting fraud at Steinhoff, perpetrated under the watch of disgraced CEO Markus Jooste.
The company had argued that the report should be kept confidential.
[3/12] The media houses had requested access to a PwC report following an investigation into alleged accounting irregularities at Steinhoff revealed in 2017, which led to the resignation of Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste.
— amaBhungane_Advocacy (@Advocacy_AmaB) May 10, 2022
Read the full judgment on the Steinhoff case. https://t.co/fImbGpn7jI
— amaBhungane (@amaBhungane) May 10, 2022
Bruce Whitfield interviews Rose, author of Steinheist and editor of the Financial Mail.
Rose says Steinhoff now has ten days to produce the 7,000-page report.
The court has now declared that Steinhoff’s legal privilege argument simply does not hold water…
Rob Rose, Editor – Financial Mail
Jooste is among four Steinhoff executives charged with various counts of fraud by prosecutors in Germany in March 2021.
RELATED: Germans Have Now Charged Markus Jooste – Christo Wiese
Rose says we should expect Jooste to be prosecuted “as soon as possible”.
It was a big surprise that leaders of Tongaat Hulett, for example, were arrested for fraud and hauled into court in February. I expected Steinhoff to happen before that given that Steinhoff imploded before Tongaat.
Rob Rose, Editor – Financial Mail
I think there has been progress in the NPA on some of these cases… I believe so [Steinhoff prosecution] will come at the end.
Rob Rose, Editor – Financial Mail
The Germans continue to nibble on it…but the impression of those close to the process was that they would prefer the South African authorities to act on this…partly because Markus Jooste himself is based in South Africa. South…
Rob Rose, Editor – Financial Mail
Listen to Rose’s interview below (skip to 00:49):
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