Deloitte’s troubles worsen
PLAGIARISM: ESKOM CLAIMS IT MAY HAVE STOLEN WORK FROM MCKINSEY
Claims added blow to accounting company’s professional integrity.
In the court bid where Eskom is accusing Deloitte of irregularly being awarded tender contracts worth R207 million, the power utility has also insinuated Deloitte may have plagiarised some of the contents of its proposals from global consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
In court papers seen by Moneyweb, Eskom asks the court to set aside the contracts and recover the R207 million paid to Deloitte. It also calls for former chief financial officer Anoj Singh and former acting head of group capital Prish Govender to pay costs.
A peculiar addition to the parties in Eskom’s bid is McKinsey, which is listed as the fourth respondent – not to claim relief but rather to provide it with the opportunity to “raise concerns” about the “striking similarities” between two proposals it sent to Govender and those Deloitte used in its applications.
This comes after Eskom uncovered “damning” documents, many of which were compiled by Deloitte, from the archived mail servers of Singh and Govender while conducting a “high-level audit” a couple of weeks ago.
In the court papers, Eskomchair Jabu Mabuza outlines how Deloitte came to pocket R207 million for a CFO transition laboratory and two tenders in 2016 which, it says, were awarded by “manipulating” the newly approved tender processes Eskom had in place.
Deloitte’s proposals
Between March and June 2016, in interactions that mainly involved Deloitte director Shamal Sivasanker and the Eskom officials, Deloitte sent five “off-the-record” proposals to Eskom where it laid out a case to render strategic, business and management consulting services.
This was months before an “official” tender process was started.
Govender only made a formal request for such services to be procured in August.
Mabuza states that nothing was done about the proposals until August 2016, when many of the services Deloitte put forward in its five proposals featured as services that consultants and suppliers would have to render to Eskom in the requests for quotations (RQFs) issued by Govender.
Not only is there a clear link between the criteria for the services that Eskom went on to procure and Deloitte’s proposals, but in its responses to Eskom’s RQFs, Deloitte did not mention it had previously sent proposals that dealt with the same items. Moreover, that its responses went on to regurgitate the contents of certain pages from those proposals.
McKinsey
McKinsey was one of the companies that tendered, but its bid was not evaluated, allegedly because it missed the deadline.
Mabuza states that proposals sent by McKinsey to Govender appear to have been forwarded to
Deloitte. This specifically refers to the RMO corporate plan McKinsey e-mailed to Govender on April 1, 2016.
There is no record to show that this document was forwarded to Deloitte but, says Mabuza, the company’s quotation for one of the tenders “has elements contained in McKinsey’s proposal and in some areas uses the same wording”.
“Surprisingly, Mr Govender forwarded the same e-mail and attachment to Mr Sivasanker on the day after, with the following note: ‘As discussed’,” says Mabuza.
In response to questions, Deloitte disputed the allegations, adding it welcomed the opportunity to put its version of events before a court of law.
McKinsey could not be reached for comment.
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