EDITORIAL: Watchdogs shamefully silent on corporate corruption
Perhaps keen to demonstrate that life can be stranger than fiction, Steinhoff’s former chairman, Christo Wiese is claiming ignorance and suing the retailer for R59bn
"I do not think I did anything deliberately wrong". These words, spoken by former Steinhoff CFO Ben la Grange in parliament on Wednesday, are unlikely to provide much comfort to the disgraced company’s investors who have seen the value of their investment plunge by R200bn since the accounting scandal broke in December 2017. They will have taken note of La Grange’s use of "deliberately". Later, when asked if he felt he’d been negligent, given the fraud that swept through the company, La Grange’s lawyer prevented him from answering "for legal reasons". It would also have come as a shock to hear the man who in the five years before Steinhoff’s collapse was the proud holder of the title "chief financial officer" tasked with keeping an eye on the purse strings, wriggle as he tried to deflect the blame onto his former boss, Markus Jooste. There had been a "limited sharing of information" from Jooste, La Grange said. Jooste is due to be grilled by parliament next week. It’s worth asking, i...
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