Markus Jooste and the making of a financial scandal – The Mail & Guardian

The docuseries makes us wonder how many Joostes are still out there cooking the books.

When I first read Rob Rose’s bombshell book Steinheist in 2018, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor a few times. The dreadful revelations of blatant corporate corruption are even more astonishing when viewed on screen.

Carrying the same title as the book, the Showmax original docuseries Steinheist explores South Africa’s biggest corporate fraud, involving retail giant Steinhoff.

It’s a story reminiscent of a Hollywood blockbuster, filled with fraudulent accounting, fast living, race horses, a mistress and a cabal of oligarchs — the Stellenbosch mafia. In real life, former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste played the lead, with an award-winning performance of denial and deflection.

The first instalment of Steinheist left many viewers in shock and disbelief. The three episodes aired in 2022 give context to the genesis of the “accounting irregularities” which led to R1.4 billion of Jooste’s assets being frozen by the Reserve Bank.

This was followed by a 20-year ban and a R15 million fine from the JSE; his record R475 million fine from The Financial Sector Conduct Authority; his police summons to stand trial and the seizure of R60 million of assets from Berdine Odendaal, his alleged mistress.

Documentary director Richard Finn Gregory, who won the Sanlam Group Financial Journalist of the Year award for 2022 with producer Elle Oosthuizen for the first instalment of Steinheist — is still behind the lens of the two new episodes recently added to the Showmax platform. Episodes 4 and 5 go even deeper into unpacking the biggest corporate scam in South African history and how the net tightened around Jooste in the build-up to his suicide on 21 March 2024.

Broad voices on a corporate scandal

Having directed School Ties and consulted on The Station Strangler and Rosemary’s Hitlist, Gregory brings a broad range of voices into the conversation, from financial journalists and analysts to exes and even a psychologist. Key voices, such as Lesetja Kganyago, governor of the Reserve Bank, and investment officer Zwelakhe Mnguni, who was the first to raise concerns about Steinhoff, add more texture to the docuseries.

“Putting multiple voices together so that they complement each other is challenging but nothing new. It’s just the nature of this kind of documentary filmmaking,” Gregory tells me.

Visually documenting a corporate scandal layered in financial jargon and turning it into a palatable project for audiences was, however, a slight obstacle for a director lacking in-depth financial knowledge. Gregory says he was aware of this daunting task and was open to being educated.

“I’ve learnt that being ignorant isn’t something to be scared of because you can always remedy it. I just kept asking questions of the people who really know their stuff, getting them to break it down for me in the simplest terms possible, until I finally grasped what they were talking about.” 

He adds that they had to recreate some of the steps that they needed to go through to understand complex financial matters “and tried to package it in a way that would flow logically for an audience”.

The psychology of white-collar crimes

Some of the biggest business fraud cases worldwide have involved unethical leaders such as former Audi CEO Martin Winterkorn, who was involved in 2015’s Volkswagen Dieselgate; Jordan Belfort whose story was captured in 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street and Kenneth Lay of the Enron scandal in the early 2000s.

Beside these being tantalising topics for corporate governance practitioners, they also intrigue psychology practitioners who are eager to learn the reasons why corporate leaders commit white-collar crimes. Steinheist includes views from forensic psychologist Dr Giada del Fabbro, who provides insight into Jooste’s personality and motivations.

Gregory didn’t just want to look at how much money was embezzled in the Steinhoff saga but wanted to highlight the mental processes of such corrupt individuals. 

“Some people are happy to have enough to eat decently, while others are fixated on collecting money to a degree that they and their children would never be able to spend in their lifetimes. Which means rationality has gone out the window and we’re talking about things like status obsession, insecurity, pride, dominance and fear. 

“It’s psychological stuff and, if we’re not digging around in that area, we’re only telling part of the story.”

The pursuit for justice and ethical leadership

Another part of the story is the question of accountability and prosecution. Gregory, along with true-crime film pioneers IdeaCandy, started filming the new episodes in mid-2023 when some of the highest executives at Steinhoff started seeing the inside of jail cells. This was what most people — including investors and ordinary people who lost their pension funds — had been calling for since the scandal came to light in 2017.

Thus, the latest two episodes attempt to give audiences a sense of clarity and closure. They explore the ongoing efforts to recover the money and bring Jooste’s accomplices to justice. These included insider-trading prosecutions in South Africa and fraud convictions in Germany, as well as the arrest of former Steinhoff executive Stéhan Grobler, and the sentencing and plea deal of Ben la Grange, Steinhoff’s former chief financial officer.  

Despite feeling like the case was in limbo without any resolution for a while, Gregory is encouraged by the high-quality investigation behind the scenes over the years. These considered efforts speak to the ethical leadership within our country’s institutions. Gregory argues that, from the outside, for the most part, our impressions of the public sector are formed by interactions with low-level clerks and politician’s rhetoric on podiums.  

“But, while a few years ago I might have thought there was no way our institutions have the ability to crack down on financial crime, I’ve now realised that there are actually some extremely competent people working behind the scenes. 

“There are people who are actually very good at their jobs, working as hard as they can to get on top of the corruption in the country.”

In a country filled with explicit corruption and moral bankruptcy, both in the private and public sector, I ask Gregory whether our hopes are perhaps short-lived. He emphasises that, as long as these hard-working, ethical men and women stay at their posts, we do have hope of things improving, of reducing corruption, of closing the loopholes and increasing the international trust in our institutions’ ability to do their jobs properly. 

“And, if those guardrails are in place, it should help prevent corporate and governmental leadership from being tempted to put their hands in the till.”

At a time when we thought we had seen it all as a nation with the likes of former president Jacob Zuma, the Guptas and state capture, the Steinhoff scandal gives us a lot to ponder regarding corruption. Steinheist is a stark reminder that even those in tailored suits can have sinister intentions to defraud stakeholders for their own gain.

Gregory and his team capture South Africa’s largest accounting scandal with the utmost proficiency. Steinheist broadens people’s thinking about corruption in South Africa and celebrates those committed to rooting it out for the betterment of society. 

The docuseries also makes us wonder how many Joostes are still out there cooking the books and stealing the hard-earned money of ordinary South Africans trying to feed their families.