Image: Moneyweb
The National Prosecuting Authority has welcomed the sentence imposed on former Steinhoff chief financial officer, Andries la Grange, who was jailed for an effective five years in the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes court.
NPA spokesperson, Lumka Mahanjana, said 50-year-old La Grange was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years of direct imprisonment, five years of which were suspended for five years.
She said part of the sentence is that he also testify for the State in further criminal proceedings against directors, officers, and employees of the Steinhoff group.
Mahanjana said La Grange entered into a plea and sentence agreement in terms of section 105 A with the State on one count of fraud of over R367 million.
She said this emanated from the manipulation of financial statements and failure to report fraudulent activities.
Steinhoff was a multinational holding company that was listed in Germany and South Africa and was officially liquidated on 13 October 2023.
“From November to December 2016, the then Chief Executive Officer, Markus Johannes Jooste, who is now deceased, and La Grange defrauded a Steinhoff subsidiary, Steinhoff At Work, the board of directors of Steinhoff Manufacturing and Steinhoff South Africa of an amount of over R367 million.
"On the instruction of Jooste, La Grange created documentation of transactions that supported the fraudulent transactions used to inflate and falsify the annual financial statements of the Steinhoff Group for the financial year 2016,” Mahanjana said.
She said after investigations by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, La Grange was fined R2 million for the role he played in the Steinhoff At Work transactions and barred from holding office in a public company for 10 years.
Mahanjana also noted that at a point when a significant breakthrough was made to enrol the case earlier this year, the main accused, ex-CEO of Steinhoff Markus Jooste took his life on the eve of his arrest, thus escaping the hands of justice when it mattered the most.”
