{"id":23350,"date":"2025-03-06T12:43:27","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T10:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/?p=23350"},"modified":"2025-03-06T12:43:29","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T10:43:29","slug":"showmax-to-release-new-steinheist-episodes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/blog\/2025\/03\/06\/showmax-to-release-new-steinheist-episodes\/","title":{"rendered":"Showmax to Release new “Steinheist” Episodes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cThe wheels of justice have been turning.\u201d Steinheist director Richard Finn Gregory<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Showmax has just dropped the first trailer for the second instalment of Steinheist<\/em>, which goes even deeper into unpacking the biggest corporate scam in South African history.<\/p>\n\n\n

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On 6 December 2017, Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste resigned amid an investigation into accounting irregularities at the retail giant, which owned the likes of Ackermans, Incredible Connection, Morkels, Pennypinchers, PEP, Russells, Tekkie Town and Timbercity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steinhoff\u2019s share price plunged by 90% in a week, wiping over R200 billion off the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) \u2013 and off ordinary South Africans\u2019 pensions and investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cApparently Markus said to his wife, \u2018Give this five years. By then, it\u2019ll have blown over, and then we can move on with our lives,\u2019\u201d former Coronation Fund Managers CEO and co-founder Thys du Toit says in episode 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That didn\u2019t happen. Instead, five years after Jooste\u2019s resignation, the first three episodes of Steinheist<\/em> were met by rave reviews, record views on Showmax for a documentary, and a renewed public outcry about why Jooste was still a free man. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now episodes 4 and 5 pick up the story a month after the documentary\u2019s 2022 release, when the Reserve Bank seized R1.4bn of Jooste\u2019s assets. From his 20-year ban and R15m fine from the JSE, to his pursuit by German authorities; from his record R475m fine from The Financial Sector Conduct Authority, to his police summons to stand trial, the new episodes trace how the net tightened around Jooste in the build-up to his suicide on a rocky beach in Hermanus on 21 March 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story does not end with Jooste\u2019s suicide. In fact, the very next day saw the arrest of former Steinhoff executive St\u00e9han Grobler. A month later, R60m of assets were seized from Bernice Odendaal, Jooste\u2019s alleged mistress.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Episodes 4 and 5 explore the ongoing attempts to recover the money and bring Jooste\u2019s accomplices to justice, from insider trading prosecutions in South Africa to fraud convictions in Germany to the sentencing and plea deal of Ben la Grange, Steinhoff\u2019s former chief financial officer.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comparing the case to a chess game, Jooste\u2019s fellow Hermanus resident, Alec Hogg, editor of BizNews,<\/em> says, \u201cThe game is not over. There are still other pieces on the board\u2026 That\u2019s really the big question: \u2018Who are the accomplices?\u2019\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christo Wiese, the former chair of Steinhoff, agrees. As he says of Jooste in the trailer, \u201cWe all accepted that he couldn\u2019t do it alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Lesetja Kganyago, governor of the South African Reserve Bank, in the Showmax Original Steinheist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In addition to Wiese and Hogg, Steinheist<\/em>\u2019s second instalment features interviews with those closest to the story, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • Lesetja Kganyago, governor of the South African Reserve Bank<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Alex Pascoe, head of market abuse at the Financial Sector Conduct Authority<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Zwelakhe Mnguni, chief investment officer and co-founder at Benguela Global Fund Managers, who brought the first criminal case against Markus Jooste<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Louis du Preez, the CEO of Steinhoff when it was dissolved<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • News24<\/em>\u2019s Jan Cronj\u00e9, runner-up in the Business Journalism category at the 2024 Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Awards for his reporting on Steinhoff<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Former Daily Maverick<\/em> investigative journalist Pauli Van Wyk, a previous Journalist of the Year winner<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Rob Rose, who literally wrote the book on Steinheist<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Episode 5 ends with the question of how to avoid a corporate scam of this scale happening again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As Khaya Sithole, an accountant, academic and activist, says, \u201cPeople should not be allowed to labour under the impression that it will never happen again – because we didn’t see this one coming. That means we probably can’t see the next one coming unless we do things differently.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Steinheist <\/em>is made by SAFTA-winning true crime pioneers IdeaCandy (Devilsdorp<\/em>, Tracking Thabo Bester<\/em>, Rosemary\u2019s Hitlist<\/em>, School Ties<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Steinheist <\/em>went on to become the most-nominated documentary going into the SAFTAs, with director Richard Finn Gregory and producer Elle Oosthuizen winning the Sanlam Group Financial Journalist of the Year award for 2022 – the first TV journalists to take home the prize in nearly a decade. The duo also won the Broadcast: TV and Video category award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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