The faces of the two former Steinhoff executives - Dirk Schreiber and Siegmar Schmidt - have been blurred in accordance with German law. The appeared in the Oldenburg court.Steinhoff's former European finance chief, Dirk Schreiber, was handed a three-and-a-half year jail sentence by a German court, making him the first person to be imprisoned over an accounting scandal that led to the near-collapse of the retailer.
Schreiber also won some leniency from judges because he cooperated extensively, a court spokesperson said. A police investigator told the court earlier on Monday that the probe profited massively from his help. Schreiber is also providing information to the investigations in South Africa, she said.
While Schmidt initially told the court he’d always thought the transactions were valid and that he’d acted on orders from Jooste, he later admitted to certain wrongdoing. The two men were among eight people that were named by the company in 2019 following a forensic probe by auditor PwC that uncovered €6.5 billion of irregular transactions with eight firms over eight years.