Steinheist

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

On 6 December 2017, when CEO Markus Jooste resigned amid an investigation into accounting irregularities, Steinhoff’s share price plunged by over 90% in a week, wiping over R200 billion off the Johannesburg Stock Exchange – and off ordinary South Africans’ pensions and investments. As Financial Mail editor and Steinheist author Rob Rose says in the documentary, “That’s South Africa’s Enron.” 

“Steinheist is the story of Markus Jooste and a multi-billion-rand lie that everyone bought – a lie that was built across over two decades,” says director Richard Finn Gregory, whose Patagonia-set feature documentary The Boers At The End of The World won three SAFTAs in 2016. “How did this happen? How did no one see it coming? And how is Marcus Jooste not in jail?”  

Steinheist provides a fascinating, insider glimpse into what former Steinhoff chairman Christo Wiese describes in the trailer as “the Jooste black magic” and into a complex man who is described variously as “one of the best accountants ever in this country”; as someone who was only interested in his business and in horse-racing; as someone who “got addicted to the lifestyle, the money, the fame”; and as a “very clever, slick, and a very slippery operator.”