Steinhoff forced to reveal names of directors implicated in PwC report

Steinhoff executives were ultimately forced to divulge the names of former and current directors who’ve been implicated in the PwC report as having been responsible for inflating the retailer’s income by a whooping R100 billion.

PwC’s overview forensic report did not publicly mention the culprits, but after threats by legislators to subpoena Steinhoff’s current executives and board members, they succumbed.

Steinhoff executives cited a legal opinion that prevents them from divulging the names of the culprits, but the legal opinion obtained by Parliament suggested there’s no legal jurisdiction that prevents them from obtaining these names from Steinhoff.

After it was clear that MP’s were not about to back off, Steinhoff did an about-turn.

Steinhoff Group CEO Louis du Preez mentioned the names of the executives.

“The executive that we refer to is Markus Jooste. The other executives at Steinhoff is Mr Michiel Schreiber; secondly, is Mr Ben le Grange. If I can refer to executives outside Steinhoff, I can refer the committee to… thirdly, Mr Ramano.”

The JSE and other regulatory bodies told Parliament they already completed almost all their investigations into the matter and forwarded the details to law enforcement agencies for criminal and other charges.

Head of the Hawks, Godfrey Lebeya confirmed they are on top of the matter.

“The offences that we are currently looking at are fraud, corruption, money-laundering and the contravention of the Company’s Act.”

The NPA has also allocated three senior prosecutors to the Steinhoff case.

Mpho Dungada, from the NPA, says that they will attend to the report.

However, legislators felt this is too little, too late. They even doubted the capacity of the Hawks and the NPA to deal with what is arguably the country’s biggest corporate scandal.