20 March 2025

Steinheist

From the creators of Devilsdorp, Steinheist is a five-part documentary series about the biggest corporate scam in South African history.

On 6 December 2017, after CEO Markus Jooste resigned amid an investigation into accounting irregularities, Steinhoff’s share price plunged by 90% in a week, wiping over R200 billion off Johannesburg’s stock exchange, the JSE – and off ordinary South Africans’ pensions and investments. It was the biggest corporate scandal in South African history.

Five years later, the first three episodes of Steinheist set a new Showmax record for the most first-day views of any documentary. They were met with rave reviews and a public outcry about why Jooste was still a free man.

Steinheist went on to become the most-nominated documentary going into the SAFTAs, with director Richard Gregory and producer Elle Oosthuizen named the Sanlam Group Financial Journalist of the Year for 2022 – the first TV journalists to win the prize in nearly a decade. The duo also won the Broadcast: TV and Video category award.

Now two new episodes pick up the story a month after the documentary’s 2022 release, when the Reserve Bank seized R1.4bn of Jooste’s assets. From his pursuit by German authorities to his record R475m fine from the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, to his police summons to stand trial, the new episodes trace how the net tightened around Jooste in the build-up to his suicide on a rocky beach in Hermanus on 21 March 2024.

Steinheist is made by multi-award-winning true crime pioneers IdeaCandy (Devilsdorp, Tracking Thabo Bester, Rosemary’s Hitlist, School Ties).

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