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Markus Jooste trial in Germany to start, but he remains stumm
On Tuesday at 09:00, exactly five years, four months and eight days after Markus Jooste stepped down as the CEO of Steinhoff, his long-awaited criminal trial will get under way in a German court.
For the past five years, Jooste has tried his best to stay out of the limelight – spending time between his Hermanus mansion, Lanzerac wine estate in Stellenbosch, and friends at swanky golf estates. During all this time, the 62-year-old has said nothing to the media about his time at Steinhoff, declining to comment even when the SA Reserve Bank attached his assets last year.
He appeared once before Parliament in 2018, where he testily denied any wrongdoing and tried to blame the plunge in Steinhoff’s share price on a deal gone wrong with an ex-German business partner.
His silence continued when Steinhoff announced earlier this year that it risked being forced into messy liquidation which could spell the end of the 59-year-old company.
According to a note from the Oldenburg Regional Court, Jooste is facing five counts of accounting fraud in the years between 2011 and 2014. He stands accused of complex Scheingeschäfte – fictitious transactions that either hid losses or caused bogus profits to flow into Steinhoff’s books. As a result, Steinhoff appeared to be a far more successful company than it was in reality.
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