Former Chief Financial Officer of Steinhoff, Andries Benjamin La Grange, has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, of which five years are suspended, for his role in the scandal that brought the multinational company to its eventual liquidation.
The sentence – meted out in the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court – comes after La Grange entered a plea and sentence agreement in which he will give evidence for the state against other alleged actors in further related criminal proceedings.
“La Grange entered into a plea and sentence agreement…for one count of fraud of over R367 million, emanating from the manipulation of financial statements and failure to report fraudulent activities. He was convicted as such,” a joint statement by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI) read.
The joint statement explained La Grange’s role in the matter.
“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.
“After investigations by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) 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,” the joint statement said.
La Grange’s conviction and sentencing also comes after the NPA secured its first conviction, sentence and confiscation order related to the case.
“Securing a second conviction and sentence in the Steinhoff matter in just a week is a reflection that even though the wheels of justice turn slowly, impunity no longer prevails, and those accused of complex commercial crime now know that it is a matter of when the dreaded knock on their door comes.
“This shows the commitment by both DPCI and NPA in dealing with one of the biggest cases of corporate fraud in the history of South Africa. This case has been one of the most complex commercial crime cases that the DPCI and the NPA have had to deal with.
“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,” the statement concluded.
READ | NPA scores Steinhoff victory
Last week, the NPA secured its first conviction, sentence and confiscation order related to the Steinhoff case.
This after the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in Pretoria sentenced former Steinhoff physician, Dr Gerhardus Burger, to some five years imprisonment – wholly suspended for five years, if he is not found guilty of contravention of section 78(2) of the Financial Markets Act within that period. – SAnews.gov.za
