Top journalist to write book on Steinhoff saga
A SOUTH African publisher has signed a top investigative journalist to write an explosive book on the Steinhoff saga.
To be published before the end of the year by NB Publishers, Financial Mail editor Rob Rose’s book will be titled Steinheist: Inside SA’s Biggest Corporate Fraud.
It will be under the Tafelberg imprint, which was also the publisher of Jacques Pauw’s bestselling The President’s Keepers last year.
Steinheist will tell the tale of Steinhoff’s spectacular crash, which wiped billions off the net worth of tycoons such as Christo Wiese and GT Ferreira, and off the pension funds of millions of ordinary South Africans. The publisher said the book is set to expose how Steinhoff became the equivalent of South Africa’s Enron.
Rose has already interviewed key players in Germany, the Netherlands and South Africa.
He has been writing about similar financial scandals in South Africa for nearly two decades.
After earning a law degree, he took on the corporate governance and finance beat at Business Day before moving to the Financial Mail in 2007, where he exposed the Barry Tannenbaum Ponzi scheme.
Later, at the Sunday Times, he investigated shady contracts awarded by Fifa as part of the 2010 Soccer World Cup and was part of the team that exposed corruption involving Dina Pule, which led to her dismissal as telecommunications minister.