Hours after Bain & Co withdrew its membership of Business Leadership SA (BLSA), Treasury deputy director-general Ismail Momoniat called for scrutiny of all of the US consultancy’s contracts with the public sector.
Momoniat, who has previously criticised the firm for its failure to co-operate with the Nugent commission, which was set up in 2018 to probe governance failures at the SA Revenue Service (Sars), told Business Day on Tuesday that many executives still at the firm bore criminal liability for the attempted destruction of Sars, a post-apartheid institution that was once regarded as among the best in the world.
“It should not stop with what they [Bain] have paid back,” Momoniat told Business Day, referring to the R217m it agreed to hand back for its botched restructuring of the tax agency after coming under fire in the final report of the Nugent commission.
“Bain has a lot more to answer for. They need to provide details that they did not provide to the Nugent commission on the actual meetings [with former Sars commissioner Tom Moyane] and that the matter didn’t just stop” with former managing partner Vittorio Massone. “Head office was clearly involved.”
Bain, which has become one of the most prominent private sector faces of state capture during the Jacob Zuma presidency, was brought back into the spotlight earlier in January when the first report by acting chief justice Raymond Zondo found that it had played a central role in the destruction of Sars, together with Moyane, who was picked by Zuma to run the organisation.
Massone was said to have played a central role, meeting Zuma about 17 times, and was aware of the pending appointment of Moyane in September 2014, long before it became official. Both commissions and Momoniat rejected the notion that Massone, who was allowed to leave the firm and the country, had gone rogue.
BLSA, which represents some of the country’s biggest companies, has faced a relentless campaign driven by former Bain partner Athol Williams, to boot the organisation out, having reinstated it in 2021.
Ironically, Williams, together with Norman Mbazima, the former CEO of Kumba Iron Ore, was brought into Bain as part of its rehabilitation strategy.
Momoniat was also critical of Williams and his role in what he regarded as a PR exercise with no genuine desire for accountability and redress.
Led by CEO Busi Mavuso, BLSA’s board members include some of the best-known corporate leaders, including JSE CEO Leila Fourie, Nedbank CEO Mike Brown and Lungisa Fuzile, CEO of Standard Bank SA, who is arguably better known for his efforts, as then director-general, to fend off attempts by the Gupta family to capture the Treasury.
With former British MP and anti-apartheid activist Peter Hain taking the campaign against Bain global, the association with the consultancy is proving too toxic for BLSA. Hain has called on the UK authorities to freeze all government contracts with Bain subject to the firm co-operating with the National Prosecuting Authority.
BLSA said on Tuesday it accepted Bain’s resignation. The body had previously removed Bain from its membership in 2018 after the conclusion of the Nugent commission.
Mavuso has called for Massone and other current and former Bain officials who played a role in the capture of Sars to be held criminally liable. “There is no company beyond reproach [including Bain]. The architecture and system of business is not inherently corrupt. What you do have is individuals that are corrupt,” she said.
“The reason there is so much anger around Bain and the state capture project is because we want someone in ... orange overalls ... so you are not going to put Bain as an entity in jail, you are going to put an individual in jail,” she said.
The Black Management Forum (BMF) called for those implicated in the Zondo report to be banned from doing business with the state.
“While corruption in SA has been made to be synonymous with the public sector and government, what this report has starkly revealed is the complicity of the private sector in aiding and abetting state capture,” the BMF said in a statement.
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