Q&A

Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste evaded his day in court by killing himself on the eve of his arrest. Chris Barron asked National Prosecuting Authority boss

Why did it take you so long?

Because this is how long complex cases take to investigate. We’ve had three prosecutors working on this in the past six years with about seven investigators from the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks).

Together with a forensic report by PwC in 2019, investigations by the Financial Services Conduct Authority and the Reserve Bank ... So no shortage of evidence?

That is what complicated it. That there were so many investigations by different bodies, which meant prosecutors needed to go through all of this and decide which parts they could ring fence in order to make sense of it and prosecute. And a lot of the evidence was abroad. We had to make MLA (mutual legal assistance) requests to Germany, Austria, UK, Australia, Switzerland, Netherlands, France ...

Would you have been ready for trial if Jooste had been arrested?

We were 95% ready.

Ready enough for a conviction?

Absolutely. Once a person’s arrested it doesn’t mean you stop investigating. But at this point we’d reached the reasonable prospect of a successful prosecution.

With an A-team led by Wim Trengove?

Three external counsel including Trengove were brought on board recently to make sure we had all our ducks in a row. But I have to emphasise that this case has been led by three extremely competent NPA prosecutors for the past six years.

Where were the NPA’s top prosecutors in your case against (former Eskom CEO) Matshela Koko?

We didn’t lose the Koko case.

It was thrown out after your prosecutors requested another postponement to tie up loose ends, wasn’t it?

A number of rulings could have been made, this was the most drastic. But I have confidence in our prosecutors.

Will there be requests for postponements to tie up loose ends when the trial against Steinhoff’s former legal head begins?

We are 95% ready. And we don’t expect that the trial date will be any time soon, so these loose ends can be tied up while a lot of pretrial processes continue.

When will you reinstate the case against Koko?

We’re quite advanced in what was outstanding, so hopefully that will be fairly soon. We’re working very hard to get it into court as soon as possible.

When will the trial against (former Transnet executives) Brian Molefe, Anoj Singh and Siyabonga Gama get under way?

I’m not aware where in the pretrial process it is, but it’s already been eight or nine months since their arrest. I don’t know when the trial date will be fixed, that’s in the hands of the judiciary.

When are we going to see the successful prosecution of high-profile politicians named in the Zondo state capture report?

A number of them have already been before the courts.

You haven’t had a single conviction, yet, have you?

That’s the challenge we have. Once a matter is enrolled we don’t control the process. We object to constant applications for adjournments and postponements. Stalingrad tactics are a huge risk to the rule of law in this country. But at the end of the day that’s in the hands of the judiciary.