A prior article by Oxebridge reported that the ISO 9001 training organization Meridian Quality Management Professionals was falsely claiming ISO 9001 from QA International (QAI). This has since been found to be incorrect.
Initially, suspicious claims made on the Meridian site led Oxebridge to reach out to QAI to confirm that Meridian’s ISO 9001 certification. QAI responded that they had “no affiliation” with Meridian, and they were not certified.
Meridian’s CEO, Asim Baig, then refused to answer questions on the matter. At that point, Oxebridge published its article.
Baig then provided an expired certificate issued by QAI. Oxebridge contacted QAI for confirmation, and QAI admitted that, in fact, Meridian was an ISO 9001 client. They reported that QAI’s certificate had lapsed, but that QAI had just undergone a new audit recently. QAI claimed this new information came in during the two days that had elapsed since they first reported to Oxebridge that they had “no affiliation” with Meridian.
Oxebridge put QAI on alert that they are required to accurately report the certification status of clients, and that clearly something in QAI’s system had failed, if it was reporting that current ISO 9001 clients were not listed in their internal systems.
Oxebridge maintains that Meridian’s claims were improper, however. At the time of the report, Meridian was falsely claiming ISO 9001 certification when, later, it admitted its certificate had actually lapsed. Meridian also admitted that the usage of the QAI logo was improper, as it claimed Meridian was “accredited” by QAI; ISO 9001 is a certification, not an accreditation.
The confusion illustrates the need for a single, mandatory and comprehensive database of ISO certificates. The current practice of allowing each CB to manage their own methods for reporting certificates is broken, allowing uncertified companies to claim certification, and to allow unaccredited certificate mills to grow unchecked.
