The founder of the accreditation body International Accreditation Service (IAS), Chuck Ramani, died on April 1, 2026.
Ramani worked for the International Conference of Building Officials, eventually rising to the position of Vice President. He then became active in the accreditation space, helping to form the original International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) and the Asia Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (APAC). In 2002, he formed IAS as a formal ISO accreditation body.
It took years for IAS to gain any traction, and under Ramani’s leadership, the accreditation body adhered to both ethical and technical requirements under the accreditation rules of that time. By 2015, IAS had begun competing directly with ANAB, the US’s de facto sole accreditation body, offering a lower-cost accreditation service at the same levels of competence and trust.
I spoke with Ramani in 2015 and was struck by how he had avoided all the tropes of a “cheap Indian knockoff.” Ramani was dedicated to ensuring IAS operated honestly and ethically and, at the time, did not accredit any certification bodies that could not prove they complied with the applicable standards. In short, under Ramni, IAS operated as it should have.
Ramani retired in 2018 and was succeeded by Raj Nathan. Under Nathan, the IAS reversed course and became, effectively, a global “accreditation mill,” selling accreditation certificates to anyone who could pay. IAS assessor competence suffered, accreditation witness audits became largely drive-by, performative events, conducted by underqualified, poorly-trained outsourced, third-world auditors. Combined with the leadership of Mohan Sabaratnam, who adopted a “mafia-style” leadership posture, the IAS became the go-to accreditation shop for corrupt, third-world certification bodies and laboratories to obtain a quick and cheap “American” accreditation.
Whereas Ramani had resisted doing so, Nathan and Sabaratnam instead leaned into the worst impulses of Indian scammer culture, effectively normalizing it within the ISO accreditation scheme.
At the same time, the departure of Ramani’s influence at APAC led to APAC executive Graeme Drake being able to operate without any guardrails, and Drake converted APAC into a means by which scammer accreditation bodies and criminal laboratories could obtain full IAF recognition through pay-to-play APAC membership.
Now, both IAS and APAC openly violate tax laws, accreditation rules, the IAF multilateral recognition agreement (MRA) requirements, and ethical norms to rubber-stamp ISO accreditations and certifications worldwide.
Under pressure from IAS’s low-cost accreditation, the once-respected ANAB has converted itself over to largely selling training classes, and has adopted the worst IAS practices of ignoring complaints, harassing whistleblowers, and committing fraud upon the global supply chain.
We can’t know how the IAS and, indeed, the entire ISO accreditation scheme might have evolved had Ramani been able to maintain some influence. With his passing, we are instead left with the sad reality that scammers and sharks took over his legacy and helped fast-track the destruction of a certification scheme the world relies on for trust and public safety.
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 35 years’ experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and helps establish certification and accreditation bodies with the ISO 17000 series. He is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the writer and artist of THE AUDITOR comic strip, and is currently writing the DR. CUBA pulp novel series. Visit www.drcuba.world
