Law enforcement agencies insisted on Wednesday that the Steinhoff saga was receiving priority amid concerns that the scandal-which first emerged about three years ago and is regarded as possibly the biggest case of corporate fraud in SA-continues to drag on without much progress or prosecutions.
Briefing parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) on various corruption cases, Hawks boss Lt-Gen Godfrey Lebeya said the directorate had received in excess of 200 witness statements on the Steinhoff saga, and the matter was one part of the top 10 priority cases.
“We have never relaxed and we are still pursing the matter,” Lebeya said, without providing clear timelines. Explaining how cases were prioritised, Lebeya said consideration was given to the amounts involved, the age of the case, and national interest, among other factors.
The Hawks are investigating Steinhoff for fraud, misrepresentation and the loss of more than R200bn for investors.
Separate investigations by PwC have uncovered the over-statement of income and assets at the company, which was once Europe’s second-largest furniture retailer.
At the centre of the saga is former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste, one of the senior executives who was at the helm of the retailer ahead of its collapse in December 2017.
In 2018, Jooste told parliamentarians that he was not aware of any financial irregularities on the day he resigned. In October, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) hit Jooste with a R122.9m fine for insider trading on the day of the collapse of the Steinhoff share price in December 2017. This was as part of total administrative fines of R241m levied on Jooste and three others implicated in the saga.
Civil society groups and various experts have previously suggested that the Hawks and other law enforcement agencies do not have the capacity to investigate such complex cases.
Shamila Batohi, the head of National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), told MPs that the Steinhoff case was extremely complex and required all hands on deck. However, Batohi lamented the lack of capacity, especially for forensic investigations, saying this had hampered probes into several corruption cases.
“We are working extremely hard on the matter, but no decision has been made yet on prosecutions,” Batohi said.
On the broad work of the Anti-Corruption Task Team, which brings together the Hawks, NPA, and the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), MPs heard that 223 cases of corruption, some dating back to 2014 were still being investigated. Most of the cases involve municipalities, the departments of public works and infrastructure, health, and education, as well as the SA Revenue Service, the SA Police Service and the SA Social Security Agency.
Scopa chair Mkhuleko Hlengwa said it was important to get to the bottom of the Steinhoff matter and it remained “an indictment on the SA body politic at every material perspective. It has to receive the kind of attention due a priority matter”.
“If it does not, it will encourage further corruption. Scopa wants to see a concerted effort to pursue the Steinhoff matter to its logical legal conclusion, including but not limited to arrests and recoveries, in particular for the people directly affected by this corruption,” Hlengwa said.
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