The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) has fined global retailer Steinhoff €11.2-million (R191-million) after the company was found guilty of violations of disclosure requirements in the European country.
Bafin said in a statement on Wednesday the Stellenbosch-headquartered Steinhoff only submitted the annual report of the Dutch holding company for 2016/17 in mid-2019. This was too late, according to the regulations.
Steinhoff was at the time on its knees, fighting to stay afloat financially following an accounting scandal. The fine is payable in three tranches, beginning in March 2023, the regulator said.
“Steinhoff International Holdings failed to make its annual financial report for the financial year 2016/2017 publicly available within the prescribed period.
“Furthermore, Steinhoff International Holdings failed to publish voting rights notifications within the prescribed period. The company may lodge an appeal against the administrative fine order,” the regulator said in a statement.
Steinhoff, in a separate statement, said it has decided to not appeal against the fine notice. “We are pleased to have concluded another historical regulatory matter,” Steinhoff Group CEO Louis du Preez said.
Former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste’s sudden resignation on December 5 2017 was followed by a protracted controversy concerning the company’s accounting practices in its central European business dating back to many years.
In 2019, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released a damning report that pointed to Jooste and other directors who, it said, had recorded income from fictitious and/or irregular transactions between the 2009 financial year and 2017.
PwC said the fraud saw the group’s profits inflated by €6.5-billion in the period. Jooste and his executive team have not yet been held criminally liable to the corruption that took place and implicates them in wrongdoing. Steinhoff is now valued at just under R11-billion, down about 96% of its 2017 high.
The company has a primary listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and a secondary listing on the JSE.
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