La Grange said he believed one of the things that would have decreased the risk of what happened at Steinhoff was if the group had had a single set of auditors that was able to identify the nature of transactions at different levels of the group, and which would have been able to pick up misstatements.
There were many layers of companies in the enormous group with multiple levels of reporting and scrutiny. Each level had its own board with its own internal audit committee and auditors that would report upwards and consolidate at each higher layer until the top layer — where all the reports were consolidated into the holding company’s group financial statements. La Grange was mainly responsible for Africa and co-responsible for the US…
