Within minutes of the news of Markus Jooste’s death by suicide breaking, the parallels were already being drawn with the deaths of mining tycoon Brett Kebble and Bosasa CEO Gavin Watson.
The Specialised Commercial Crimes Unit had spent years unravelling the spaghetti of the Steinhoff fraud. Since the scandal was revealed in 2017, there has been considerable pressure on law enforcement authorities to bring Jooste to book considering the scale of the crime which was labelled South Africa’s Enron.On Wednesday, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority put out a damning ruling against Jooste and gave him a R475 million fine.
This feeds into the general frustration from sectors of society who believe that wealthy, white men with access to expensive lawyers and resources experience a different kind of justice in South Africa. According to the family at the time, the pathologist found that he had died of a heart attack before the crash. A photograph of Watson’s body and the accident scene was shared with me at the time and law enforcement officers and his family members expressed no doubt that it was him in that car.Former Bosasa COO Angelo Agrizzi had gone to the Zondo commission and had publicly revealed footage of him preparing bribes in his walk-in safe.
There are photos and a video of Kebble taken on the scene of the accident and during a post-mortem that was presented to the court. Also, I have spoken to the first responders on the scene of Kebble’s death and they are very sure it was him.