Tekkie Town’s Bernard Mostert: How Jooste duped us out of R3.3bn

As the entrails of the corrupt Steinhoff empire become exposed, bruised investors are realising how little defence they have against a sociopathic CEO supported by crooked auditors. But spare a thought for Braam van Huyssteen, his CEO Bernard Mostert, and Tekkie Town which invested two and a half decades building the business from a single store in Mossel Bay. As Mostert explained on this week's episode of Rational Radio, their initial asking price of R4.5bn was chiselled down to R3.3bn because of greater potential upside – but when the dust cleared, all they have left are relatively worthless shares and a long legal fight to get their company back. We were duped, Mostert admits. Yet his colleague Van Huyssteen has forgiven the man who did it the duping. A fascinating discourse. – Alec Hogg

Essentially what had happened was that Braam van Huyssteen took R20,000 which he borrowed from his family. He turned that R20,000 into a business that we had sold a minority stake in 2013 – 2014 to Actus. The Actus valuation at the time was roughly about R1.56bn, if I remember correctly. We marched on and then Braam developed a love for horses through his daughter's showjumping career and crossed over into the racehorse industry and there he met Markus and I think that was, in hindsight an ill-fated meeting because that changed our path in many ways.

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