Trained as a lawyer, Wiese entered discount consumer retail in 1981 when he acquired a controlling interest in Pep Stores from a family member.
[2][1] He remained involved in business, buying a diamond mine in Richtersveld in 1976, and he ran unsuccessfully for election to Parliament in 1977, standing as a candidate for the opposition Progressive Federal Party in the Simonstown constituency.
[6][2][1] Pep (renamed Pepkor Limited in 1982)[6] was tremendously successful in the discount retail market over the next two decades, buoyed in part by the de facto protectionism produced by international sanctions against the apartheid government.
[7] In March 2012, Wiese became a shareholder and director of German-listed Steinhoff International as part of the sale of his five-star vineyard hotel, the Lanzerac Manor and Winery, which he had owned since 1991.
The deal, reported in the media as a sale to a foreign consortium,[11] was spearheaded by Steinhoff executive Markus Jooste, who was Wiese's personal friend.
[29] He remained chairman of Invicta Holdings and TradeHold,[30] and in 2024 he told press that he was focusing on his mining interests in Trans Hex Group Limited.
The City of Westminster Magistrates' Court approved a forfeiture order under the Proceeds of Crime Act, finding that the cash was associated with criminal conduct.
[32][33] Wiese said that he had earned the money in diamond deals in the 1980s and 1990s and had stored it in a safety deposit box at the Ritz Hotel in order to avoid South African exchange controls.
[5] Resident in Clifton, Cape Town, they also own the Lourensford Wine Estate in Somerset West, purchased in 1998,[5] and a private wildlife reserve in the Kalahari desert.