Still shrouded in secrecy

STEINHOFF: PWC REPORT REMAINS UNKNOWN

- Adriaan Kruger

It has been more than seven years since Markus Jooste resigned as CEO of Steinhoff on 5 December 2017 and Steinhoff's supervisory board requested PwC's advisory services unit to conduct a forensic investigation into accounting fraud at the former international retail giant.

The investigation took more than a year to complete and a hefty report of 7 000 pages, including 4 000 pages of supporting documentation, was presented to Steinhoff's supervisory board in March 2018.

Immediately referred to as the PwC Report, shareholders, the public, law enforcement agencies and the media all wanted to see it. The main focus of interest was to see who knew what and who were the main perpetrators of the accounting fraud.

Steinhoff only published a short overview of the findings a further year later, on 15 March 2019, claiming that the PwC Report contained privileged information and disclosing the full report would hamper efforts to recoup losses.