State serves Steinhoff accused with a new provisional indictment

JOHANNESBURG - The State has served the accused in the Steinhoff case with a new provisional indictment.

On Wednesday, former company secretary and head of legal, Stephan Grobler, made his second appearance in the dock of the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in Pretoria in connection with the case.

At the same time, former CFO, Andries "Ben’ la Grange" made his first.

The indictment has now been updated following the death by suicide of Markus Jooste, who was originally cited as accused number one and the joinder of La Grange to the case.

Jooste’s death came just a day before he was meant to hand himself over and make his first appearance in court and the authorities didn’t even have time to update the provisional indictment before his co-accused, Grobler, appeared alone in the end.

As a result, Jooste was still listed in the original papers as an accused at the time.

He has now been removed, though, and La Grange has been added.

The original papers also cited a total of 12 counts, including four of insider trading.

However, these were only intended to be levelled against Jooste and have been removed.

What remains now are two counts of racketeering, two of fraud, one of contravening the Financial Markets Act, one of contravening the Companies Act and one of contravening the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.

The case was postponed on Wednesday, and the accused are both due back in the dock again in October.