When Markus Jooste died in 2024, he took many of Steinhoff’s secrets with him. But not all of them. The collapse of Steinhoff wiped more than R200-billion from global stock markets and exposed the largest corporate fraud in South African history. For years the full account of what happened remained locked inside a confidential forensic report and was kept from the public.
Now, James-Brent Styan, author of the bestselling 2018 book on Steinhoff, returns to the scandal that shook South Africa’s business world. Drawing on the full forensic report and multiple interviews with key insiders speaking for the first time, Styan uncovers new details about Jooste’s secret lives, the way he ran his company and the silences that allowed the deception to grow.
This gripping sequel reveals how unchecked ambition and blind self-interest outmanoeuvred every corporate-governance safeguard and built a house of cards in plain sight. Until it all came crashing down.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James-Brent Styan is an investigative author whose books have exposed state corruption, global inequality and corporate greed. In 2015 he wrote about the state of Eskom, predicting the power crisis that would follow. His 2018 exposé on Steinhoff became a number one bestseller. Puppet Master is his sixth nonfiction title.
'Puppet Master: The secrets of Markus Jooste and the Steinhoff crash' is published by Jonathan Ball Publishers