Didn’t appear in court
Justice seeks ex-Steinhoff manager by arrest warrant
6/22/2023 12:56 am
Falsified balance sheets, damage in the billions and cheated investors – the process of the retail group Steinhoff can not begin yet. The main accused manager simply does not appear. He is now wanted on an arrest warrant.
An arrest warrant has been issued against the main suspect in a criminal lawsuit involving balance sheet manipulations in the billions at the international retail group Steinhoff. This was confirmed by a spokesman for the district court in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, on Wednesday. The main suspect, Markus J., did not appear for the opening hearing in mid-April. The prosecuting prosecutor from Oldenburg then applied for an arrest warrant against the 62-year-old. According to the financial news agency Bloomberg, this was issued two weeks ago.
According to the indictment, the complex process involves sham transactions that are difficult to understand and inflated valuations of fixed assets in a network of companies belonging to the Steinhoff Holding, through which losses at subsidiaries between 2010 and 2014 are said to have been concealed and alleged profits reported for the entire group. The former boss is therefore accused of inciting incorrect presentation in balance sheets.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the accused is said to have given two managing directors of German subsidiaries, who were accused in parallel in separate criminal proceedings, results that they finally achieved by booking fictitious transactions on paper. In total, there are five specific allegations and total assets of more than two billion euros.
The irregularities were discovered in 2017 and plunged the globally active group into a crisis. The share value fell by 98 percent. Tens of thousands of shareholders and business partners demanded more than eight billion dollars in compensation. Markus J. resigned at the time and stated that he had no knowledge of accounting fraud. In January 2022, the South African judiciary responded to a proposal by Steinhoff Holding to pay the equivalent of 1.4 billion euros to settle the numerous disputes.
Steinhoff Holding has interests in furniture store and retail chains in the USA, Europe, Africa, South America, Australia and New Zealand. It used to include furniture store chains in Germany. However, these holdings were later sold in the course of the reorganization.