An amaBhungane and Financial Mail investigation has confirmed what many have long suspected: former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste (57) held secret stakes in companies that traded with Steinhoff for years to Jooste’s covert benefit. These deals’ true beneficiaries were hidden from investors, says a Financial Mail report.

Some of the deals also secretly included the Steinhoff family, through a trust founded by the company’s founder, Bruno Steinhoff, for his daughters, including current Steinhoff director Angela Krüger-Steinhoff.

Weeks ahead of the expected findings of a PwC forensic report on what went wrong at Steinhoff, this new evidence suggests Jooste used Steinhoff to secretly enrich himself and Bruno Steinhoff’s family at the expense of shareholders, who were none the wiser about this ‘self-dealing’.

It also suggests that – contrary to the view that Steinhoff only took a wrong turn shortly before it imploded last December – a systematic heist played out from the start, when Steinhoff listed on the JSE in 1998.

The FM says it is an alarming new twist in what could be SA’s biggest corporate swindle.

Now it turns out that Jooste had built a network of a few key individuals who helped him construct these secret deals for two decades. The findings and the individuals involved are discussed in the detailed FM report.

Full Financial Mail report