Steinhoff’s former CEO Markus Jooste and the company’s former legal head Stéhan Grobler were told this week to hand themselves over to the Hawks. However, authorities made a gruesome discovery when they found that Jooste had shot himself yesterday.

He died on his way to hospital in Hermanus. This comes just hours before he was meant to hand himself over to the Hawks. This week, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority had fined Jooste R475 million after it found that he and Steinhoff’s former European finance chief, Dirk Schreiber, were responsible for publishing falsified statements about Steinhoff International’s financial position between 2014 until 2017. 

Jooste resigned from the company nearly seven years ago. The FSCA ruling may have proven too much for Jooste, as it was the first definitive finding that he was responsible for the fraud at the centre of Steinhoff, which had wiped R220 billion off the Johannesburg Stock Exchange within a week.