In 2017, international retail holding company Steinhoff collapsed after multiple irregularities were found within the company and an in-depth investigation was launched to discover the truth behind the saga. What regulators found shocked a nation to its core and affected thousands of South Africans who had money invested in the company.
Five years on from the incident, there is still a lot to unpack and several truths that need to come to light before this devastating chapter can be closed.
A 3-part documentary series has been produced investigating this complex and shocking story and MultiChoice Studios is proud to have added the series to their catalogue of original titles.
It has received high praise from a variety of publications. TimesLive described the series as "The rise and fall of SA billionaire Markus Jooste and the crash of Steinhoff famously knocked R200bn off the JSE, and director Richard Finn Gregory skillfully weaves interviews with the central role players into a gripping doccie." Alec Hogg for BizNews said "It surpasses my expectations: a truly world class production, brilliantly applying the compelling content. Riveting viewing."
“As we are seeing in the news, it seems like almost on a weekly basis there’s something new that is coming to light. We’ve known that there have been various investigations going on over the past few years, but it took the German tax authorities five years, from 2015, just to figure out what it was that they wanted to try and prosecute various people on,” says series director, Richard Finn Gregory.
“It has taken a long time for people to get to the bottom of it. Only now are we starting to see some movement on it, so I think the time is right to do a series like this because we’ve a little more perspective than we had in the first few days or months after the crash at the end of 2017,” he adds.
Gregory gained recognition for his 2015 documentary, The Boers at the End of the World, which won three technical awards at the 2016 SAFTAs. The three-part documentary series is produced by multi-award-winning production agency Idea Candy, best known for their work on the record-breaking documentary series Devilsdorp, several local news shows, and for producing dozens of short films for the South African film festival, Silwerskermfees.
Rob Rose, who wrote a book about the saga with the same name, is also actively involved with the series, especially in making sense of all the details of the case from a financial and criminal perspective.
“I think that the documentary is, firstly, telling people the story in a way that is completely new. I think that the financial press largely covered the story. I [also] think it was difficult to kind of communicate the message of what actually happened in Steinhoff, and why it mattered to the average person on the street. I think this documentary will go a long way to doing that,” said Rob Rose, editor of Financial Mail.
Steinheist follows on the heels of the success of recent Showmax original docuseries such as Sex in Afrikaans and Devilsdorp. The series is a must-watch for fans of true crime and is sure to keep viewers glued to their screens as they wait to see what else will unfold in this complex story.
Watch episode 1 of the brand-new series here.
