Embattled Steinhoff CEO, Markus Jooste has died. Jooste, 63, took his life on Thursday in his hometown of Hermanus.
His passing comes a day after the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) fined him R475 million for disseminating false, misleading, or deceptive information about the company. This penalty was in addition to a previous R20 million fine the regulator imposed for insider trading.
Jooste is infamous for his role in the 2017 Steinhoff scandal, in which senior execs at the multinational blatantly cooked the books to inflate profits falsely. It was South Africa’s largest-ever private sector fraud and accounting scandal.
The scandal isn’t just about some rich shareholders losing some dough: given Steinhoff’s size, most pension funds would have had some exposure to its stock and suffered when R200 billion was summarily wiped off the company’s market capitalisation after the scandal. That means ordinary people like you and me, as well as anyone with a pension or investment product in South Africa, would likely have been affected.
Stéhan Grobler, a lawyer who headed Steinhoff’s legal department and acted as a director for many of the group’s companies, appeared in the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court on Friday for a bail hearing. He handed himself over to the police this morning.
Jooste’s death marks the end of a tumultuous chapter in South Africa’s corporate history. His passing comes amid ongoing scrutiny and legal battles stemming from the scandal.
