Johannesburg - Former Steinhoff Chief Financial Officer Ben La Grange has told Parliament he did not know the company was in serious trouble before the crisis hit in last December.
La Grange also told MPs on Wednesday former Chief Executive Markus Jooste did not disclose some of the information to him.
The former CFO is facing tough questions from MPs on the collapse of Steinhoff.
MPs want more action from some of the individuals who were involved in the collapse of the company.
La Grange said he was not happy about what happened at Steinhoff.
“Did Markus Jooste lie or mislead me? I think there was a little bit of sharing of information between Jooste and myself,” he said.
He said he became aware of the fraud when a report was presented to him early December.
He also told MPs he did not have any relationship with Jooste that extended outside of their work.
“My relationship with Jooste was that of business colleagues. We were not friends outside of the business environment,” said La Grange.
He said the company would need to work hard to get to the bottom of what has happened.
The work done by the auditing firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, would be able to uncover some of the issues that led to the financial crisis at the company.