The JSE has finally taken action against the disgraced former Steinhoff CEO.
Markus Jooste fined R15m, banned from directorships at listed companies for 20 years
The JSE has censured former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste for cooking the books to deliberately mislead the market.
In mid-November 2016, Jooste had created a fictitious handwritten document claiming pro rata contributions worth €23.5-million (R430.5-million), which Steinhoff at Work (a subsidiary of the holding company), would be entitled to receive from the TG Group.
Jooste gave the document to then-chief financial officer Ben La Grange to generate a false invoice to the TG Group for processing. The false invoice inflated Steinhoff at Work’s income for the 15 months ended September 2016 by R376,649,872, which in turn inflated the income of the group’s income.
Without this fictitious income, Steinhoff at Work’s stated operating profit of R47,545,585 should instead have been a loss of R329,104,287.
Jooste has been hit with two R7.5-million fines and barred from holding office in publicly traded companies for 20 years.
He is appealing the fines.
