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Steinhoff wants Markus Jooste to pay back R870m - report

Steinhoff has filed papers in the Cape Town High Court in an attempt to claw back hundreds of millions of rands from its former CEO Markus Jooste and its ex-CFO Ben la Grange, according to the Financial Mail

The business magazine reported on Wednesday that the Stellenbosch-headquartered company is claiming  R870m from Jooste and R272m from la Grange. This would include both salaries and bonuses. 

Steinhoff did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Wednesday afternoon. Fin24 has not seen a copy of the summons. 

Jooste and la Grange were previously named by Steinhoff as forming part of a group of eight people implicated in the findings of a 15-month forensic probe of the company's books by PwC.

Steinhoff instituted the probe in December 2017, after Jooste abruptly resigned at the start of an an accounting scandal. While Steinhoff views the full 3 000 page PwC investigation as privileged, it published a 11-page overview of the probe’s key findings in March which argued that a "small group" of former executives inflated the group's profit and asset values for years. 

At a Parliamentary committee meeting in June, Steinhoff leadership named the people implicated. 

News of the summons comes a week after Steinhoff reported a a loss of €1.19bn (R19.3bn at current exchange rates) for the year ended September 2018. The €1.19bn loss compares to a restated loss of €3.99bn (roughly R65bn at current exchange rates) for the 12 months ended September 2017.

Meanwhile, its former chairperson Christo Wiese, speaking to CNBC Africa on Wednesday, said it was now clear that, prior to the PwC probe, the audited results of Steinhoff "meant nothing". 

"They were signed off but they are shown or have now been shown to be not really representing the factual situation," he said. 

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