Partner’s resignation in public hits troubled Bain
Williams cites lack of disclosure on firm’s role in bringing Sars to its knees
In a setback to Bain & Co’s campaign to clean up its public image in SA, a partner drafted in to tighten its corporate and ethical standards publicly resigned on Thursday, after barely six months on the job.
Athol Williams, a University of Cape Town lecturer, cited lack of full disclosure about the Boston-based consultancy’s role in bringing the SA Revenue Service (Sars) to its knees in an announcement before thousands of shocked finance professionals at a conference in Sandton.
The revelation by Williams that Bain, which judge Robert Nugent’s commission found had colluded with former Sars commissioner Tom Moyane to weaken the tax agency, was withholding information is a blow to Bain’s efforts to contain the fallout from the 2015 consulting work.
It is also likely to present the Treasury with more ammunition to bar Bain from doing work for the government again.
The company brought in Williams and retired deputy chair of Anglo American SA Norman Mbazima to oversee the implementation of remedial action after the Sars debacle.
Treasury tax and financial sector policy deputy directorgeneral Ismail Momoniat, who has in the past also accused Bain of not telling the whole truth, said Williams’s resignation was long overdue.
“Bain needs to disclose to
Sars and national treasury the whole truth and provide all their internal investigation reports as well as all documents and communication with all Sars officials during the 2013-2018 period, as well as all meetings its former head in SA, Mr [Vittorio] Massone, held with Mr Moyane and others, including in Nkandla,” Momoniat said.
The Nugent commission’s report of 2018 said there were two corruption schemes that Bain was part of at Sars.
The smaller scheme was Bain’s attainment of the tender to restructure the tax agency irregularly. And the bigger scheme “can be described as a premeditated offensive against Sars, strategised by the local office of Bain & Co, located in Boston, for Mr Moyane to seize Sars”, the report says.
Williams said it was Bain’s refusal to answer questions about this alleged strategising with Moyane that made him walk away.
“When I ask questions, I get shut down. As an internal person, as a partner who has to stand up publicly and say ‘they are doing the right thing’, for my own credibility, my own conscience and also for the good of SA, I couldn’t be part of that,” Williams said.
Williams said he still does not believe Bain was involved in “the big scheme”, but it was “somewhere in between”.
He said he could not share publicly what kind of information Bain was withholding, given the sensitivity of his investigation, and he first needed to check with Nugent what he wants to do with the information.
SHODDY WORK
was a setback for Bain as far as convincing SA that it was a changed company.
“It gives the impression that there is no genuine intent within the organisation to come clean and answer questions. I think the way Stephen van Coller and EOH are going about cleaning up is a good example of how it should be done,” Gevers said.
Corruption Watch CEO David Lewis said Bain and all the other firms that were complicit in state capture have not completely come clean and they should perhaps be handed over to the Hawks to force them to reveal more details.