Police were investigating the death of former Steinhoff boss Markus Jooste on Thursday night following reports that he had shot himself at his Hermanus property.

Lieutenant Malcolm Pojie of  SAPS confirmed to Daily Maverick early on Thursday evening that the Hermanus police opened an inquest docket after they responded to a shooting incident at about 14.40pm on Thursday afternoon at Kwaaiwater beach in Hermanus. The 63-year old man sustained a gun shot wound to the head and and succumbed to his injuries shortly after arrival at a private hospital.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Le Roux, Mbikiwa, Trengove: NPA’s A-team was ready to charge Markus Jooste

The SAPS confirmed they responded after the shooting. Jooste is said to have walked out of his house, stood in front of a neighbour’s home on or close to the beach and shot himself there. Emergency services found him lying partially on the cliff path. It was not immediately clear where Jooste shot himself, or to whom the weapon belonged.

An eyewitness said the incident happened outside his home. Emergency personnel had been called to the scene, attached drips with fluid and carried Jooste with a heavily bandaged head on a stretcher to an ambulance, the witness said. 

The nature of the charges against Jooste were not known at this stage, but a source said they related to alleged crimes committed at Steinhoff.

His death comes a day after he was informed that he had to pay a R475-million administrative penalty to the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) on or before Friday, 19 April 2024 – giving him a month to come up with the funds.

Until his death, the former Stellies Old Boy was stoic, maintaining in recent interviews with the FSCA that he was “unaware” of any financial irregularities.

Although Jooste attended FSCA interviews under notice and on dates arranged with his lawyers, his responses to most questions were not actual answers to the questions.

“He persisted that there were no financial irregularities that he was aware of or participated in. To that extent, he complied with the notice to attend, but failed to provide all answers and information relevant to the investigation in a cooperative manner,” the FSCA said in its signed penalty order. 

The R475-million fine was for issuing false or deceptive statements about Steinhoff International Holdings Limited and Steinhoff International Holdings NV, which Jooste knew or ought reasonably to have known were false, misleading or deceptive. This included the omission of material facts. 

Former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste appears before several committees in Parliament on 5 September 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa. Jooste made his first official public appearance since his abrupt resignation in December over accounting irregularities at Steinhoff. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)

The FSCA also revealed that it had waived any fines against Steinhoff’s former European finance chief, Dirk Schreiber, in return for his cooperation, which infers that he revealed incriminating information. Schreiber has already been sentenced to a three-and-a-half-year jail term by German authorities. 

The Steinhoff documents that were specifically related to the R475-million fine were Steinhoff’s annual financial statements and annual reports for the 2014 to 2016 financial years and for the 2017 half year.

The Steinhoff International securities were listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (now the JSE) and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange during this period. It is worth noting that between 2014 to 2017, Jooste earned more than R651-million from Steinhoff International alone.

The FSCA noted in the court order that he received income from other sources during this time, but failed to disclose that income despite being asked to do so. 

In the years before December 2017, when Steinhoff spectacularly imploded, the company and Jooste were the darlings of the JSE. 

Jooste had developed a near-mythical reputation of a seminal businessman with the Midas touch. The company listed in Germany and the Netherlands, and the Public Investment Corporation poured billions of rands into acquiring Steinhoff shares, funded by the Government Employees’ Pension Fund money. 

But it was a mirage.

Jooste did make some excellent business decisions, but bought just as many lemons.

Jooste and a number of Steinhoff managers stand accused of artificially inflating profits while pulling a blanket over the money-losing business decisions – all the while moving billions of rands out of South Africa.

Epic self-dealing and related party loans exacerbated the ever-growing black hole in the company’s finances. All the while engaging in a dizzying flurry of cross-border transactions. By December 2017, the game was up. 

Jooste has suffered a series of blows since then.

Government authorities, both local and international, have been closing in on his assets, his digital communication and all linked money flows. 

Up to this point, none was so efficient as the South African Reserve Bank. 

Extensive, multiyear investigations came to a head in October 2022 when the SA Reserve Bank attached all assets they could link to Jooste.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Disgraced, Departed: The Financial Sector Conduct Authority case against Markus Jooste

SA Reserve Bank investigators claimed Jooste was involved in at least R4.836-billion worth of questionable cross-border money flows and said he was in contravention of the country’s Exchange Control Regulations. 

The SA Reserve Bank took control of Lanzerac Wine Estate in Stellenbosch despite Jooste’s attempts to build layers between him and the ostensible ownership of the estate. The SA Reserve Bank also seized four pieces of land linked to the boutique winery Klein Gustrouw in Stellenbosch, the content of Jooste’s large Hermanus compound in Voëlklip, the house where he reportedly shot himself, the Jooste family’s Silver Oak Trust, and five cars registered to his wife and chauffeur. 

The SA Reserve Bank also seized cellphones and other digital devices.

Jooste is suspected to have been central to coercive attempts to cajole former SA Reserve Bank divisional head at the FinSurv department Raymond Paola to allegedly sign off on a large number of unlawful cross-border transactions, Scorpio revealed on 12 March this year .

This led to the freezing of R5.5-billion of Steinhoff’s funds in the company’s local bank accounts in the middle of 2023. DM

A guide to the Steinhoff scandal

• Steinhoff’s share price plunged in December 2017 when its CEO Markus Jooste abruptly resigned after auditors flagged accounting irregularities in its financial documents.
• Jooste appeared before Parliament where he insisted there had been no accounting irregularities at Steinhoff.
• In October 2020, the FSCA imposed an administrative penalty of R161.6-million on Jooste for breaching the Financial Markets Act. The fine was later reduced to R20-million.
• The SARB received a court order to attach assets valued at about R1,4-billion, including Lanzerac Wine Estate in Stellenbosch and the Jooste family’s Silver Oak Trust.
• The SARB also attached the assets of Jooste’s girlfriend Berdine Odendaal, totalling about R25-million, including properties in Val de Vie, Paarl.
• German authorities issued an arrest warrant when Jooste didn’t show up to stand trial on charges of accounting fraud.
• Earlier this month, the FSCA hit Jooste with a R475-million fine.
• The NPA was preparing criminal charges against Jooste.