If PW Botha and Danie Craven idea Peter Hain’s management in disrupting South African rugby and cricket excursions to the UK 50 years ago used to be bloody stressful, the SARS-take care of conclude co-conspirators, Bain and Company, wants to be apoplectic. At the origin, Bain saved their frigid, attempting every trick in the book to lead clear of accountability, but Hain has lost none of his terrier-enjoy instincts. If he succeeds, our reliable and honourable Lord will demonstrate pivotal in bringing about their corporate death. He’s turned up the warmth in the British political gadget to win Bain blacklisted in all executive procurement and tenders and is hell-bent on achieving the identical in the US. Read his letter to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster right here to stare his extremely effective distillation of findings against Bain, the inevitable conclusion being that felony circulate, never mind huge recompense, must phrase. Where Bell Pottinger went (i.e. abdomen up), Bain looks extra and additional more likely to seem at. – Chris Bateman
23 February 2022
Rt Hon Stephen Barclay
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Expensive Stephen
BAIN & CO AND THE NUGENT COMMISSION
Thank you to your letter of 2nd February 2022 (ref MC2022/01126), following mine to the Top Minister urging that Bain & Co be suspended from any executive contracts, and combating the firm from bidding for additional ones, due to the of its complicity in corruption in South Africa’s awful decade of ‘command take care of conclude’ beneath extinct President Zuma.
You indicated that your officers would be titillating with Bain and I’d resolve to grab the final result of that please sooner than I elevate the subject additional in the Condominium of Lords.
Nonetheless, leading South African Contemplate Robert Nugent has since drawn my attention to Chapter 3 paras 3-19 of the Narrative some three years ago of the Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of South African Earnings Carrier (SARS) that he chaired. The closing document of the Commission is to be stumbled on right here: Nugent Narrative.
Contemplate Nugent had been alerted by media stories that I had taken up with the Top Minister the future operations of Bain & Co in the United Kingdom, consequent to the role it performed in seriously and mendaciously detrimental SARS as desired by extinct President Zuma who held a enormous sequence of clandestine meetings with Bain to position the repurposing of diverse command entities including how SARS’ ability to take care of conclude taxes from, amongst others his cronies and vested pursuits, will likely be disabled – one thing that, as an quick result of Bain’s consultancy work, used to be performed to awful attain on the South Africa’s public funds.
Chapter 3 of the Nugent Narrative dealt specifically with the role performed by Bain. You’re going to inquire of from the document that its destructive role did no longer advance to light by any voluntary disclosure by Bain. It got right here to light from a couple of emails that had been stumbled on amongst 23 lever-arch files of inappropriate documents that had been delivered, unsolicited, to the Nugent Commission by Bain. There could be shrimp doubt that the documents had been delivered in the expectation that their very volume would be such as to divert the Commission, and that the emails had been inadvertently incorporated. It used to be exclusively by the diligence of a member of the Commission’s employees, who, unfortunately for Bain, living about examining every and every doc that the few emails got right here to light.
Up to now as additional records used to be bought, the Nugent Commission has made clear that used to be now no longer by any assistance from Bain. On the opposite, the Firm did the total lot it can probably well well well to lead clear of any additional inquiry, including withholding the findings of the supposed unbiased investigation performed by global laws company Baker McKenzie and withholding witnesses. The thrust of the Commission’s work used to be directed to restoring SARS to paunchy operational ability as early as that that you have to well be ready to imagine of, and uncovering the paunchy extent of the role performed by Bain, which would devour been enjoy extracting enamel, used to be now no longer pursued by the Commission, even so it concluded that Bain used to be “in deep collusion to restructure SARS,” that its role used to be “a premeditated offensive against SARS” in which “neither used to agonize for the pursuits of SARS, but for their very hold pursuits,” and that “the Commission has now no longer but heard the paunchy truth from Bain” That, nonetheless, as I explained in my letter to the Top Minister, used to be indeed performed in the document closing month of the Judicial Commission chaired by Deputy Chief Justice Zondo the achieve Bain used to be devastatingly proven to devour acted in a mendacious and destructive procedure in its work in SARS to abet the unsuitable wholesale looting of public enterprises and departments. This Commission which described Bain’s role at SARS as “unlawful”, but again stumbled on that they had colluded to damage SARS and instructed that every individual Bain’s public sector contracts be examined with a gaze to prosecution.
It has continually been disappointing to Contemplate Nugent that, though three years devour handed, Bain has never admitted to its dishonest contempt and disdain for his Commission, and via that, for accounting to the of us of South Africa for its conduct in systematically ensuring tax avoidance and compliance by dismembering SARS’ tax-raising capabilities.
Rapidly after discovery of the incriminating emails, Bain living about an intensive internal inquiry, referred to in the Nugent Narrative, but the final result of its inquiry has never been disclosed. In my gaze the inference is obtrusive that Bain’s investigation used to be now no longer directed against coming neat but used to be directed as a substitute to informing itself sufficiently to gain in damage adjust – a gaze I mark that is shared by the Nugent Commission.
Bain cynically announced that it supposed co-working fully with the Zondo Commission on Order Procure whereas failing to add that it had performed rather the opposite relating to the sooner inquiry. Truly it did no longer cooperate fully with, or repeat its criminally shabby role, to Zondo.
I take into story the disdain it had for the Nugent Commission, and additionally for failing to advance abet neat to the later Zondo Commission, and via that its disdain for the of us of South Africa, is not any less egregious than the role it performed in assisting the detrimental of SARS. In my gaze that, in itself, is sufficient for precluding Bain from titillating in work at public institutions.
In response to my interventions, Bain will shrimp question instruct all but again to your officers, as it has performed sooner than, that the fault is attributable to the extinct head of its local office, and it has since cleaned out its stables. I fabricate now no longer assume such a assertion would be taken seriously – and nor, I mark, does Contemplate Nugent. It’s most senior management in Boston – and crucially for you and the Top Minister – in London, had been engaged in its internal inquiry and devour but to repeat what it stumbled on. It would exclusively in actual fact converse to devour cleaned out the stable once it discloses what used to be in the stable in the first region.
As a substitute, with the recount involvement of its senior Boston and London management, it now no longer exclusively used to be complicit in South Africa’s decade of unsuitable command take care of conclude, but has tried the total lot that that you have to well be ready to imagine of to cowl it up. That has incorporated punishing and seeking to discredit considered one of its extinct Senior Companions who used to be praised by the Zondo Commission for his proof and who contributed to the Nugent Commision. I place a matter to that your officers engaged with Bain additionally interview Mr Williams who has relocated to the UK in picture to flee intimidation and harassment. I’m able to provide his contact considerable features in case your officers call me.
Meanwhile, as I mark Contemplate Nugent has indicated, Bain is unfit to contract with public institutions, at least for goodbye as it withholds what it did to SARS, as it deliberately did relating to the Nugent Commission, and has persisted in doing ever since, touching on to SARS and varied public institutions.
I beg the Authorities to behave snappy on this and to institute a ban on Bain working for any public sector organisation in England, and I will likely be copying this letter and mine to the Top Minister, to the Welsh and Scottish First Ministers asking them to manufacture the identical.
The US Ambassador to the UK wrote to me on 14 February stating that my request similarly to ban Bain had been shared with the US executive in Washington DC and I am copying this letter to him as successfully.
Till a global corporate enjoy Bain ceases its complicity in command corruption in worldwide locations enjoy South Africa, pays abet all the undoubtedly broad costs earned and faces the outcomes of reliable lawsuits instructed by the Zondo Commission, no respected executive ought to manufacture industrial with it, absolutely now no longer in the UK and US 4 the achieve Bain senior executives are up to their necks in both that complicity and subsequent cowl-americaof it.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Hain.
Read additionally:
- Lord Peter Hain – the bane of Bain and their bankrupting brethren
- Athol Williams on Bain’s ransacking of SARS
- Op-ed: Modified into Bain’s take care of conclude of SARS fuelled by the dictates of organised crime?
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