German prosecutors charge ex-Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste with balance sheet fraud
Former Steinhoff International CEO Markus Jooste is among
four people charged in Germany for accounting crimes, a person familiar with
the investigation said.
The case was filed about four months ago, according to the
person who declined to be identified discussing private matters. Prosecutors in
the Germany city of Oldenburg confirmed in a statement on Thursday that they
indicted three former executives and another manager over false accounting.
They did not disclose any names.
Fake proceeds from bogus transactions were booked at some of
the group’s units, according to the statement. The fake deals made it seem that
assets were sold to third parties while they were in fact acquired by other
companies close to the group, it said.
In an interview on Thursday, Jooste’s German lawyer called
the allegations inaccurate.
The bogus transactions were allegedly used to manipulate
balance sheets by more than €1.5bn. Additionally, the value of real-estate
assets was inflated by€820m, prosecutors said. The charges cover a period from
July 2011 to January 2015.
Thursday’s charges are the first in the criminal cases over
the scandal that brought the retailer, based in SA and listed in Frankfurt, to
the brink of collapse. Deloitte refused to sign off on the company’s financial
statements in 2017, triggering a dramatic share-price collapse.
Jooste resigned the same day, and has since been named by
the company as central to a web of fraudulent transactions that artificially
inflated profit and asset values over several years. He has denied the
allegations.
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