Jooste a no-show at challenge to $1.04m penalty

Former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste, who faces a warrant of arrest in Germany for failing to appear for his fraud trial, did not attend proceedings in Pretoria last week for his challenge against a $1.04m administrative penalty (reduced from $8.4m) for insider trading, Fin24 reports. Shortly before proceedings began, a member of Jooste’s legal team, Stephan Haynes from law firm DKVG, confirmed that he would not be in attendance. Jooste, who resigned from Steinhoff in late 2017 when news of the accounting scandal broke, was fined $8.4m for insider trading in October 2020 by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority after being found guilty of sending an SMS to four friends warning them to get rid of their Steinhoff stock immediately. In December, the Financial Sector Conduct Tribunal reduced the amount by 90% to R1.04m, ruling that Jooste did not disclose 'precise' inside information to his friends. In July, the Higher Regional Court of Oldenburg in Germany rejected Jooste's challenge against his arrest warrant. News24 has previously reported that authorities were working on a request to extradite him from SA. In August, the same court handed Steinhoff's former European finance chief, Dirk Schreiber, a three-and-a-half-year jail sentence, making him the first person to be imprisoned over the scandal that led to the near-collapse of the retailer.

Full Fin24 report