The Progressive Professionals Forum (PPF) has called for the Special Investigating Unit to probe troubled global retailer Steinhoff International in light of the latest revelations of corruption, notes a Polity report. An investigative report by audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found that a small group of former Steinhoff executives inflated the profit and asset values of the company for years by more than R100bn.

The Hawks has reportedly said it is anxiously waiting to be granted access to the full PwC forensic report into wrongdoing at Steinhoff. The PPF said the full report of more than 3 000 pages with 4 000 document annexures was nothing short of wasted paper not worth the more than R200bn lost by investors, including government pensioners, after an accounting scandal at Steinhoff led to a run on its shares.

‘The report's attempt to water down hard executive transgressions, blatant criminality into mere simplistic non-conformance to disclosure requirements and accounting standards should absolutely be frowned upon from a reputable auditing firm like PwC,’ it said in a statement.

‘We believe that the continued assurances breaches by auditing firms in SA necessitates a closer look at the conduct of the auditing industry as a whole in our country as it's beginning to give strong indications of collusion.’

The PPF called for strong action to be taken against former Steinhoff executives Markus Jooste, Stehan Grobler, Davide Romano, Ben la Gange, Dirk Schreiber, Siegmar Schmidt, Alan Evans and Jean-Noel Pasquier among many others.

Full Polity report