Le Roux, Mbikiwa, Trengove: NPA’s A-team was ready to charge Markus Jooste

A digger loader excavates on Markus Jooste's Kwaaiwater stand on February 21, 2022 in Hermanus, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images/Misha Jordaan)

By Pauli van Wyk

21 Mar 2024

The National Prosecuting Authority had planned for Markus Jooste and several senior Steinhoff executives to square off against its A-team next week — advocates Michelle le Roux SC, Wim Trengove SC, advocate Michael Mbikiwa from the bar and two commercial crimes prosecutors from the NPA. The disgraced former Steinhoff CEO fatally shot himself on Thursday afternoon.

It is unlikely that the 63-year-old Markus Jooste knew about the heavyweight team recruited to bring a litany of charges against him, a number of insiders said. It is, however, said that Jooste was informed to present himself for arrest on Friday, 22 March 2024.

The shooting incident happened just more than 24 hours after the Financial Sector Conduct Authority fined him an eye-watering R475-million and announced intentions to initiate a criminal case against him.

The authorities had been circling Jooste and Steinhoff executives for a long time. In recent weeks, senior Steinhoff personnel such as Piet Ferreira told Scorpio he and others had signed affidavits after giving a series of interviews to the Hawks.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Steinhoff mastermind Markus Jooste reportedly commits suicide shortly after R475m fine

The appointment of highly regarded advocates Michelle le Roux SC, Wim Trengove SC and Michael Mbikiwa from the bar had been a closely guarded secret. An insider said the initial plan was for the three advocates to be sworn in by a sitting Judge President on Friday to act as state prosecutors in the Steinhoff case. In terms of s38 of the National Prosecuting Authority Act, NDPP Shamila Batohi, in consultation with Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola, asked the private lawyers to offer their services to the prosecuting authority.

“The NPA under Batohi was sensible enough to get the very best team, and for that they must be lauded,” an insider said.

The NPA is under severe pressure as it is seen not to be moving on a long list of high-profile cases. What made the job in this case particularly difficult was cross-border money movements and information that had to be gathered from across the world.

NPA spokesperson Mthunzi Mhaga declined to comment before the accused appeared in court.

A number of sources had for the longest time endured Jooste’s “irksome” claims to all who cared to listen that the South African authorities would never be able to arrest and charge him.

The plan was for Jooste and his co-accused to face charges next week linked to the manipulation of Steinhoff’s share price, misrepresentations to third-party business people he did deals with, including Christo Wiese, Braam van Huyssteen and Jayendra Naidoo, as well as years of misstatements in the company’s annual financial statements, two insiders said.

There was no reason why the other accused could not and should not still be charged, insiders said, but both highlighted the unfortunate convenience of his erstwhile comrades now having a “dead guy to blame for everything”.

“That Jooste really was central to everything that was going on is clear. But his cronies are just as much to blame,” a source said.

A digger loader excavates on Markus Jooste's Kwaaiwater stand on February 21, 2022 in Hermanus, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images/Misha Jordaan)

Jooste was found a few hundred metres from his compound in Hermanus on Thursday afternoon after he fatally shot himself at Kwaaiwater beach, Lieutenant Malcom Poije of the SAPS confirmed.

An eyewitness saw emergency personnel carrying Jooste on a stretcher, attached to drips and with a heavily bandaged head, towards an ambulance. Indications were that he shot himself on or close to the cliff path. Jooste is said to have been declared dead soon after arriving at the hospital. Police responded to the shooting incident and opened an inquest docket.

Jooste and a handful of his Steinhoff cronies were to be arrested and charged imminently, a source said – as soon as Friday, 22 March. The NPA will have to decide how to proceed after Jooste’s unexpected death.

JSE ‘darlings’

In the years before December 2017, when Steinhoff spectacularly imploded, the company and Jooste were the darlings of the JSE.

Jooste had developed a near-mythical reputation as a game-changer businessman who could spot profit-making ventures where others saw no potential. He had the Midas touch and made a lot of people a lot of money. The company listed in Germany and the Netherlands, and the Public Investment Corporation poured billions of rands into acquiring Steinhoff shares, funded by Government Employees’ Pension Fund money.

But it was a mirage.

Jooste did make some excellent business decisions, but bought just as many lemons as the next guy. Jooste and a number of Steinhoff managers are now accused of having papered over these failures by artificially inflating profits with the aid of seemingly unrelated companies — all the while moving billions of rands out of South Africa.

Epic self-dealing and related party loans exacerbated the ever-growing black hole in the company’s finances — propped up by a dizzying flurry of cross-border transactions. By December 2017, the game was up.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-03-21-steinheist-the-day-the-fraud-became-clear/

Jooste subsequently suffered a series of blows.

Government authorities, both local and international, have been closing in on his assets, his digital communication and all linked money flows.

An exceptionally sticky point for Jooste was that Steinhoff’s former European finance chief Dirk Schreiber received a three-and-a-half-year jail sentence in a German court in August 2023. Former director Siegmar Schmidt was handed a suspended sentence of two years. Schreiber cooperated extensively with the court and is said to have been very helpful to South African authorities, too. Jooste was also charged, but failed to show up for the trial.

Up to this point, though, none was as efficient as the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).

Extensive, multiyear investigations came to a head in 2022 when the SARB attached all assets they could link to Jooste, his alleged lover Berdine Odendaal and a number of former Steinhoff executives like Chris Grové and Ben la Grange.

SARB found that a divisional head at the bank’s financial surveillance department, Raymond Paola, has signed off on a list of suspicious exchange control applications from Steinhoff. Jooste and Grové in particular, being a former SARB official himself, are suspected of having been central to coercive attempts to cajole Paola into allegedly favouring Steinhoff. In this way, the company possibly unlawfully moved billions of rands offshore. The discovery led to the freezing of R5.5-billion of Steinhoff’s funds in the company’s local bank accounts in 2023.

SARB further took control of Lanzerac Wine Estate in Stellenbosch, four pieces of land linked to the boutique winery Klein Gustrouw in Stellenbosch, the contents of Jooste’s large Hermanus compound in Voëlklip, the Jooste family’s Silver Oak Trust and five cars registered to his wife and chauffeur. Berdine Odendaal was also under close scrutiny and blocked from knowingly or unknowingly assisting Jooste’s financial position. DM

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JSE ‘darlings’