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Court Battles Over Steinhoff Skulduggery

Until December 7th, 2017 Mayfair Speculators was run by former Steinhoff boss Marcus Jooste and his son in law, Stefan Potgieter. This was when Marcus Jooste left the company suddenly but not before moving millions in assets to it’s holding company (creatively called: Mayfair Holdings).

This was just one day after ABSA called Mayfair and asked them to increase their collateral as Steinhoff Shares began to tumble. Just a few days later ABSA would demand a repayment of R226 Million.

‘Mayfair Speculators had … around R1.2 Billion in loans from ABSA, Investec and Sanlam’ 

Mayfair Speculators had over time run up around R1.2 Billion in loans from ABSA, Investec and Sanlam. How did they get such big loans? One of the reasons was that they held all of Jooste’s Steinhoff shares. Shares which soon became useless as they tumbled from R60/share to only R5/share.

This has prompted ABSA to go to court saying that Jooste knew the trouble was coming and deliberately moved the assets out of the firm before trouble hit and the banks were forced to recall the loans.

In August Mayfair Speculators made a dividend transfer of R1.5 Billion to Mayfair Holdings (who don’t technically owe the bank anything). The dividend payment included properties, companies and money.

A Quick R93 Million Out The Back Door

At the end of November, just days before the crisis hit Mayfair Speculators convinced Investec to give them another R93 Million which disappeared into the now gapping blackhole of probable non-repayment as the firm has around R1 Billion in liabilities and only R350 Million (or less) in assets.

‘just days before the crisis hit Mayfair Speculators convinced Investec to give them another R93 Million’

A court battle has been raging and fraud accusations flying which will be picked up again in February 2018 as the banks try to recover what funds they can from Jooste following the Steinhoff collapse.