@ Sleepwa123 and all others:
Rob Rose's Opinion: Steinhoff's foiled $200m mattress scam
This week marks the third anniversary since the Steinhoff bubble popped and, while it might not seem that way, the net is tightening around former CEO Markus Jooste. In recent weeks, excerpts of the PwC forensic report have silently trickled into the public domain, almost unnoticed. This in itself is significant - Steinhoff has guarded the full 7,000-page report as if it were an exclusive early Covid-19 vaccine. But more than that, what those excerpts reveal is quietly devastating: previously undisclosed elements of SA's largest fraud, which wiped R230bn off the market value of Steinhoff, hammering thousands of pension funds in the process. Thanks to a summary of the PwC report and some journalistic sleuthing, we already know the broad brushstrokes. For example, over more than a decade, R106bn in "fictitious and/or irregular" profits were included in Steinhoff's profits, and cash flows were manipulated through a systemic con, allegedly by Jooste and seven accomplices.. But there are intriguing new details in the full 56-page insider trading ruling by the regulator, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), against Jooste last month for tipping off four of his friends to sell their Steinhoff shares a week before the stock imploded. FSCA investigations head Brandon Topham, says: "Part of what we included in our ruling comes from the PwC report, which contains evidence of misrepresentation which we are investigating." Topham says the FSCA is hoping to finalise the next leg of its investigation, into the wider fraud, by April. So what's new, you ask. Perhaps most sensationally, there is confirmation of a rumour which circulated at the time of Steinhoff's collapse that Jooste had tried to artificially boost the 2017 profits by $200m for a deal that never happened with one of the worlds largest mattress makers, Serta Simmons Bedding. A fake $200m payment is about as blunt as sending a message to your friends telling them to sell.
