Meet the Anti-Bribery Anti-Corruption Center of Excellence, or ABAC, run by Zafar Anjum. ABAC is a certifiation body offering certificates to ISO 37001, the anti-bribery standard, and has lots of language on its website about being a purveyor of ethics and firmly against corruption. Heck, that last part is in their name.
The only problem is that they have been lying about their accreditation and fibbing about a whole lot of other stuff, too.
ABAC claims they hold “accreditation for more than 170 countries,” and — as of a few hours ago — had an entire page that boasted about their UKAS accreditation. The only problem is, as you may have read here, they were only accredited by UKAS in three countries.
The only problem here is that, as I reported here (again), UKAS withdrew ABAC’s accreditation back in November of 2024. So ABAC has been falsely claiming UKAS accreditation since then. So much for ethics.
Things get worse. A lot worse.
When I confronted Anjum about this, he decided to take the high road. I’m joking, of course, because this is a CB we’re talking about. Instead, he worked to delete the evidence from the ABAC website, lie to my face about what was on it, and then claim he holds some other, unnamed “accreditations” and hadn’t necessarily meant UKAS anyway.
None of that is supported by the actual ABAC website. Or at least in the form it took just a few hours ago, as it’s being modified literally as I write this.
But going further, he ran to the “blame the IT guy” well and insisted that the new website was due to roll out next week anyway. Now, remember, none of that matters. He’s been claiming UKAS accreditation for months after the withdrawal, and only began updating it after I wrote to him on LinkedIn.
You will also note how he says “accreditation scope should not be conflated with global operational presence,” suggesting I bungled the reading of his website. But, no, as you can see from the screenshot above, it was Anjum’s own company website that claimed it was “accredited for more than 170 countries,” not that it merely operated in those countries. He was the one conflating things, not me. In fact, their website home page still says that, right now.
But, sure, lie to me and then claim to be a CB that can be trusted for “anti-corruption” work.
I dug in further and found more problems. Because these scammers can’t help themselves.
The current ABAC site (as of 5:30 PM Eastern today) claims to hold accreditation by IAS as well. See here:
The only problem is that when checking the IAS website, this is what pops up when you search for ABAC:
Oops.
They still hold accreditation in Malaysia, so they have that going for them. But that’s technically only for the Malaysian company, and not the entire ABAC group, nor the home office in the UK. So not quite what it says on the ABAC website. Here’s what the Malaysian AB has listed for them:
Even the quickie “let’s delete the evidence” effort has been bungled. As of 12 hours ago (more or less), there was an entire page dedicated to their UKAS accreditation. It even had its own URL: www.abacgroup.com/ukas/. In the past few hours, after I wrote to Anjum, that page magically disappeared (but it still exists on Wayback Machine.) But it’s moot: you can tell it exists because on their “Our Accreditations” page, they still have the UKAS logo and the “More” button still points to the missing UKAS webpage URL if you hover over it.
If you thought that was all, we’re not done yet. In addition to claiming UKAS accreditation, ABAC currently insists it’s a member of the Association of British Certification Bodies (ABCB), an industry trade group. Except, ABCB has a full list of its members — right here — and ABAC isn’t anywhere on that list, either.
Want more? I’ve got it. ABAC also offers certification to ISO 31000, the risk management standard, except that it’s a guidance document and not meant for certification. You can’t get certified against a guidance document.
At this point, I’m not sure what on the ABAC website is true and what isn’t, but it seems most of the content falls into the latter category. All while they claim to be able to ensure your company operates ethically.
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
