ET TU KPM . . . GUPTA?
The public relations disaster that is Bell Pottinger has finally met its fitting end: the demise of a corporate entity dedicated to the pursuit of profit at any cost. Even if the cost would be the demise of the entity itself.
Gasping for air on what we hope is its deathbed, Bell Pottinger will serve as a necessary reminder that crime seldom pays . . . unless you’re an SA politician in power.
While Bell Pottinger’s spectacular implosion is not the first such result of unethical behaviour that borders on the criminal, it certainly will not be the last. The death of the company started by Tim Bell and Piers Pottinger in 1988 is welcome news to any peace-loving, corruption-hating and patriotic South African.
We who call this sunny piece of Africa home have, for a while, been subjected to a huge propaganda assault, seemingly paid for with our own stolen money — £100,000 of it every month for the past three years.
If it is any consolation, South Africans have extracted their pound of flesh. The 270 jobs that may be lost as a result of Bell Pottinger’s demise should not be celebrated, but they are legitimate collateral damage.
There is a whole consulting industry that owes its existence to the kind of corrupt and unethical work Bell Pottinger is dying for. Many more of our stolen treasures are being funnelled daily to pay some other shady consulting firm to peddle exactly the kind of lies that have been coming from Bell Pottinger.
The high-paying client that is the Gupta family has, for years, employed the services of auditing firm KPMG, which should operate within strict professional parameters centred on unimpeachable ethics.
Sadly, that hardly appears to have been the case for the SA franchise. KPMG has for years, it seems, lent its brand to dilute the pungent smell of corruption emanating from the precinct of the Gupta compound in Saxonwold. Nowhere else have I heard of money, stolen to fund a wedding ceremony, being passed by auditors as a business expense. But it would seem miracles are not confined to the holy pages of the Bible. They happen in the world of Kpmgupta. Of course KPMG is in good company.
Mckinsey & Co, that paragon of the best management practices, has harvested no less than R1bn from Eskom and Transnet over the past 18 months. And that’s only what we’ve been reluctantly told about.
Mckinsey has for years been “advising” Eskom and Transnet, “helping” them optimise savings and operational practices. Yet these firms have been sinking ever deeper in the operational stakes. Despite all the advice Mckinsey has been dishing out, only its own bank balance has been bulging; that of Eskom has shrunk at an alarming rate. The utility has less than two months’ operating cash left. Now that’s radical economic transformation.
Private sector pressure
Alongside KPMG and Mckinsey are armies of lawyers and other consultants growing fat at the expense of the unsuspecting public. Their only duty is to rubberstamp and professionally bless the industrial-scale looting of the public purse.
Fortunately, in SA we don’t only have an activist nation that will cause a social media storm of the kind that saw off Bell Pottinger — we also have a strong private sector that largely believes in doing business ethically.
Investors need to properly scrutinise those businesses audited by KPMG. Each firm that has the company as its auditor needs to explain how it can be trusted. Let the marketplace serve the justice so lacking in the public sector, until all the vestiges of corruption are weeded out of our corporate life, along with their expensively-suited auditors.
Armies of lawyers and other consultants have grown fat at the expense of the unsuspecting public