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Corruption Watch has expressed disgust at the corrupt conduct of yet another large multinational corporation, Bain & Company, as recently revealed at the Nugent Commission of Inquiry into SARS. The commission revealed that the global management consultancy had, in undertaking a massively costly investigation at SARS, allowed itself to be used to further the corrupt motives of the suspended commissioner, Tom Moyane. This is strikingly similar to KPMG’s infamous ‘investigation’ of the SARS ‘rogue unit’, also undertaken at the instigation of Moyane.
 
The organisation calls upon the South African government to exercise greater discernment in the sort of firms with which it contracts. It also calls for a review of the excessive use of management consultants, as – judging by the conduct of KPMG, McKinsey and Bain – they may turn out to be little more than corrupters of our public procurement system and purveyors of extremely high-priced snake oil. Furthermore, outcomes are likely to be pre-determined by the corrupt interests of those executives offering the contract.
 
Corruption Watch further calls for a criminal probe into the conduct of Bain South Africa’s CEO Vittorio Massone, in particular his alleged gift of cattle to then president Jacob Zuma, which may well constitute a bribe and, as such, a contravention of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.
 
“We note that, as is common in these circumstances, Bain has procured the services of multinational law firm Baker McKenzie to conduct an internal investigation into the circumstances surrounding its relationship with SARS,” said David Lewis, executive director of Corruption Watch.
 
“The practice is then to claim legal privilege or client confidentiality when the outcome of the investigation is not to their liking. We want to put Baker McKenzie on notice that unless it wants to damage its own reputation it will not undertake this investigation without an express agreement with Bain that the report it prepares will be publicly released at the same time that it is submitted to Bain,” added Lewis.
 

Issued by Corruption Watch