Andries Benjamin le Grange has pleaded guilty to fraud and will go to jail for his crime. File Picture
The former Chief Financial Officer of Steinhoff, Andries Benjamin le Grange, found guilty of fraud will serve an effective five years in jail.
Le Grange pleaded guilty in the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court to one count of fraud amounting to over R367 million fraud on Thursday.
His plea was part of a Section 105A Plea and Sentence agreement.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in Gauteng said the 50-year-old was sentenced to 10 years direct imprisonment.
Half of the sentence was suspended on condition that the accused is not found guilty of fraud during the period of suspension.
NPA spokesperson Lumka Mahanjana said in addition, Le Grange has to give evidence for the State in any further criminal proceedings against directors, officers and employees of the Steinhoff Group.
The charges, the NPA said, emanated from Le Grange’s manipulation of financial statements and failure to report fraudulent activities.
“From November to December 2016, the then Chief Executive Officer, Markus Johannes Jooste, who is now deceased, and Le Grange, defrauded a Steinhoff subsidiary, Steinhoff At Work, the board of directors of Steinhoff Manufacturing and Steinhoff South Africa of an amount of over R367 million.”
The NPA said on the instruction of Jooste, Le Grange created documentation of transactions that supported the fraudulent transactions used to inflate and falsify the annual financial statements of the Steinhoff Group for the financial year 2016.
“After investigations by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), Le Grange was fined R2 million for the role he played in the Steinhoff At Work transactions and barred from holding office in a public company for 10 years.”
Le Grange was arrested in March this year and was on R150,000 bail.
Steinhoff was liquidated on October 13, 2023.
Last week, Gerhardus Diedricks Burger was the first person to be sentenced in the Steinhoff corporate fraud case for Insider trading.
The 79-year-old physician was sentenced in the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court on September 26, after pleading guilty to contravention of section 78(2) of the Financial Markets Act or Insider Trading.
Burger will not serve any direct imprisonment, but has received a five-year suspended sentence on condition that he was not convicted of a similar crime during the period.
He will also testify against his accomplices.
In a joint statement, the NPA and the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (known as the Hawks) said they welcomed the sentence.
“Securing a second conviction and sentence in the Steinhoff matter in just a week is a reflection that even though the wheels of justice turn slowly, impunity no longer prevails, and those accused of complex commercial crime now know that it is a matter of when the dreaded knock on their door comes,” said Hawks National spokesperson Colonel Katlego Mogale.
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