Former Steinhoff director Hein Odendaal was fined R2 million for his part in the fraud.
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Hein Odendaal, a former Steinhoff executive, was sentenced to a fine of R2 million or four years imprisonment after pleading guilty to fraud.
This follows his appearance in the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in a matter linked to the long-running investigation into accounting irregularities at the now-defunct retail group.
Odendaal was also sentenced to an additional two years imprisonment, which is wholly suspended for a period of five years on conditions that he is not convicted of contravention of Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act and subject himself to one year of correctional supervision.
In a statement, the National Prosecuting Authority said Odendaal's sentence is the result "of his participation in the Steinhoff saga where in his position at the company, he failed to report the fraud committed through fictitious income created which led to false and misleading Audited Financial Statements to the police".
Odendaal was a director of the company between 2003 and 2018 and served on supervisory boards of several international entities within the group.
According to MarketScreener, Odendaal was previously managing director of Steinhoff Africa Group Services. Earlier in his career he served as a finance manager at the South African Reserve Bank, a manager at Arthur Young & Company and later a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Odendaal, Iwan Peter Schelbert and Stephanus Grobler were collectively facing charges including nine counts of fraud worth millions of rands, manipulation of financial statements, failure to report fraudulent activities and racketeering.
Odendaal's court appearance comes nearly a decade after the collapse of Steinhoff, once one of the largest companies listed on the JSE. Its failure was triggered by the 2017 disclosure of accounting irregularities by then auditors Deloitte, which sent the company's share price plunging and led to the resignation of chief executive Markus Jooste.
Moonstone Information Refinery reported in mid-January that one of Odendaal's co-accused, Schelbert, had been sentenced to five years' direct imprisonment after he was convicted of fraud involving more than R376 million.
Schelbert was a director and board member of Steinhoff at Work, which manufactured and distributed furniture, between June 2004 and March 2018.
The matter against Grobler, Steinhoff's former legal head, is ongoing, although he was recently fined R358.75 million by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA).
In March last year, Grobler was arrested and appeared in the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court on charges of racketeering, fraud involving R21 billion, manipulation of financial statements and failure to report fraudulent activities. He was granted R150,000 bail and judgment has not yet been handed down.
The scandal wiped billions of rand from the company's market value and sent shockwaves through global retail and investment markets, with the share price plunging about 85% in the days following the disclosure of the irregularities.
Before the scandal emerged, Steinhoff had expanded rapidly into a global retail group with operations across Europe, Africa and Australasia through a series of acquisitions.
Jooste reportedly took his own life in 2024, a day after the FSCA imposed a R475 million administrative penalty on him for accounting irregularities. He had also been due to hand himself over to law enforcement officials the following day.
"The financial statements issued by Steinhoff during the relevant period were found to be false, misleading or deceptive in respect of material facts that were either misstated or omitted," the FSCA said.
Following the disclosures, PwC conducted an independent forensic investigation into the accounting issues uncovered within the group, producing a detailed report examining the company's financial structures and the transactions that contributed to the irregularities.
Sentences against former Steinhoff directors.
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About €6.5 billion – roughly R124 billion – flowed through Steinhoff's books between 2009 and 2017 through transactions examined by investigators, making the case one of South Africa's largest corporate scandals.
PwC said eight companies were identified as having been used to artificially inflate Steinhoff's revenue during those financial years.
These included transactions involving entities presented as independent third parties that appeared to be closely related to the group or its employees and management. Such arrangements were used to record income or support asset valuations within the group's financial statements.
Investigators also examined large invoices and payments described as marketing support contributions, management fees and other service payments recorded between entities within the group.
As part of its work, PwC analysed Steinhoff's governance structures and identified a number of senior figures connected to the company's management and oversight structures.
Odendaal is listed among the individuals examined in the governance section of the report, which details the roles and responsibilities of key figures within the organisation.
The report also records responses from several members of management and supervisory structures, including Odendaal, as investigators sought explanations regarding the accounting issues uncovered at the company.
The National Prosecuting Authority has noted that the investigation and prosecution of the complex matter required extensive collaboration and technical expertise given the scale and sophistication of the alleged misconduct.
Steinhoff's collapse triggered regulatory and criminal investigations in several jurisdictions as authorities sought to determine how the accounting irregularities developed within the group.
Former chief financial officer Andries Benjamin le Grange was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, half of which was suspended, last October after he was convicted of fraud involving more than R367 million linked to manipulated financial statements and failure to report fraudulent activities.
The JSE separately fined him R2 million and barred him from holding office in a public company for 10 years.
Authorities in South Africa have continued pursuing criminal cases linked to the accounting scandal in the years since the company's collapse, with Odendaal's appearance on Thursday the latest development in a legal process that shows little sign of concluding soon.
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