How did Steinhoff happen?
Steinhoff’s directors, auditors and fund managers created an enabling environment for wrongdoing, writes Ann Crotty
Parliament’s initial engagement with Steinhoff International and a battalion of regulators was fascinating. The parliamentarians attempted to inflate their oversight role in what could be the biggest corporate fraud in SA history, and the Steinhoff team and regulators tried even harder to minimise any share of the blame. Anyone hoping for a decisive outcome from the first day’s proceedings would have been disappointed. After 10 long hours of presentations and muted questioning the only decisive thing to emerge was that nobody in the Old Assembly Chamber that day believed they should be held in any way responsible for what has happened to Steinhoff. It has to be noted that on the day of the hearing in early February nobody had any idea of the state of play at the group — apart from PwC, which was conducting the investigation into the events leading up to the shocking December 4 announcement, and the supervisory board members, who were presumably being kept abreast of their findings. ...
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