South Africa: Sarb Freezes Billions in Steinhoff Accounts - But You Wouldn't Notice in Company Financial Statements

South African Reserve Bank
South African Reserve Bank.
5 July 2023
Daily Maverick (Johannesburg)
analysis By Pauli Van Wyk

The South African Reserve Bank froze the funds in five accounts linked to Steinhoff's local operations - said to hold a cumulative value of about R5.5bn. The Reserve Bank's intervention is sure to tie a knot in operations but has not been declared in so many words in Steinhoff's latest annual financial statements. Some chutzpah for a company previously found to have misrepresented its financial statements.

The SA Reserve Bank (SARB) seems to have a strong suspicion that Steinhoff, under the management of ex-CEO Markus Jooste, breached the country's exchange control regulations.

The central bank's Financial Surveillance Department sent an order to FirstRand Bank in May to freeze five accounts linked to Steinhoff International Holdings (Pty) Limited, Steinhoff Investment Holdings Limited and Steinhoff Africa Holdings (Pty) Limited.

The accounts are said to have held a total of at least R5.5-billion at the time, a figure supported by the company's latest annual financial statements.

The action is part of a broad SARB investigation - codenamed Project Castle - into seminal wrongdoing at Steinhoff. The global retailer became infamous for being the incubator of South Africa's biggest fraud since Jooste's startling resignation in December 2017, a perception bolstered by a 2019 PwC forensic report which included in its findings that Steinhoff declared "income" of Ꞓ6.5-billion from fictitious and/or irregular transactions in the company's annual financial statements going as far back as 2009.

In an email to Scorpio, Steinhoff CFO Theodore de Klerk did not answer questions pertaining to the exact reasons for the SARB's suspicions, or whether Steinhoff's current management will ask a court to...

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