Former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste has been barred by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) from holding the post of director at any company for 20 years.
Jooste also faces two fines of R7.5m, the maximum possible.
Financial Services Tribunal judge Louis Harms dismissed Jooste’s appeal against the censure. Harms upheld only Jooste’s appeal against the fines, which will be argued at a later date.
Jooste was the CEO of Steinhoff in 2017 when auditors Deloitte refused to sign off the accounts. That led to the destruction of more than 90% of shareholder value, worth about R200bn.
Despite being implicated in the country’s biggest fraud, Jooste has not yet faced criminal prosecution.
The move by the JSE is for two incidents and follows a fine against the company in 2020.
One was for Jooste creating a false invoice worth R376m, which inflated accounts.
The fictitious, handwritten invoice reflected money that had allegedly been paid by a company called TG Group to a Steinhoff subsidiary called Steinhoff at Work, but it was not based on any transaction or money changing hands.
The JSE found the fake invoice inflated earnings, showing that Steinhoff at Work’s operating profit of R47.5m should have been a loss of R329m, and this loss should have been reflected in Steinhoff’s consolidated financial statements.
The other infraction was for false and misleading financial statements about the company’s accounts, including for 2015 and 2016.
The Reserve Bank has seized assets worth more than R1.4bn belonging to Jooste, his wife and his family trust for possibly breaching exchange control rules.
Jooste will to go on trial in Germany this year for accounting fraud in manipulating balance sheets worth €1.5bn. The value of real estate assets was allegedly inflated by €820m.