Does the New GACI Organization Have an Actual Plan?

As you know, the self-appointed accreditation oversight bodies ILAC and IAF merged to form the Global Accreditation Cooperation Inc (GACI), and set up shop in New Zealand. But what do we know about this new organization? Do they even know what they are doing?

The answer, it appears, is “of course not.”

First, the entire merger was bungled from the start. Announced many years ago, there was little support for having ILAC (the lab accreditation oversight body) and IAF (the management system accreditation oversight body) join forces at all. The two are like oil and water, with lab accreditation being a more serious, science-based thing than the rough-and-tumble, cowboy scene of management system certifications. It never made sense.

Part of this was to get the IAF out from under the IRS and US tax law, for sure, which it has been violating for decades. It was a matter of time before the IRS caught them. (Although, frankly, they are not out of the soup yet. The IRS can still go after them for the many years of fraudulent tax filings, and the IAF execs can be criminally prosecuted as individuals.)

It took many years for them to finally get everything together, and the effort was marred by amateurish self-owns that defy all logic. Keep in mind, IAF is run by one person (previously Elva Nilson from Canada, and now Victor Gandy from the US.) They have no staff, no office, no actual infrastructure. It’s one guy working out of his house in Virginia. The entire “international structure” you see — including the international Chair (previously Emanuele Riva and now Brahim Houla) and all those delegates are window dressing. They don’t actually do anything and don’t get paid. They just get their expenses paid for, making the IAF nothing more than a prepaid tourist agency and tax dodge scam.

But where IAF really screwed up is that they are so cheap, they never hired in-house counsel. They have no attorney on retainer. So when it came to merging IAF and ILAC, they screwed up every step.

First, they announced the new name would be “GLOBAC.” But they never trademarked the name, never obtained the website URL, and never even prepared a proper business plan using the name. As a result, Turkish scammers squatted the GLOBAC website domain, selling fake certificates right under the IAF’s nose. The IAF wasted time and money registering the new name in New Zealand for nothing. They had to start over, and the Turkish scammers are laughing like hyenas.

Next, the IAF folks never checked the EU regulations, which prohibit member accreditation bodies from joining a for-profit company. Not used to having to do stupid, boring, nerd stuff like complying with international laws, the IAF clowns registered the new GLOBAC as a for-profit entity in New Zealand, immediately raising objections from DAkkS, the German accreditation body. Germany announced it would not join GLOBAC and was warning all of Europe that no other countries could join, either, without violating EU law.

So the IAF had to go back and start over again, updating their Constitution to adopt a new name (“GACI“), drop “GLOBAC,” and re-register in New Zealand as a non-profit incorporated society.

And, no, they never thought to think about how a person says “GACI” and that it sounds like “John Wayne Gacy.” So now they have a name associated with one of the most famous serial killers in human history.

So, now, GACI exists. But things continue to get worse.

For reasons that defy belief, the IAF gurus decided the new URL would be the most complicated, long-winded thing ever, making it impossible to type into a browser. It is literally www.globalaccreditationcooperationincorporated.org — I am not making that up. There were so many other abbreviations they could have used (GACI.org.nz, for one), but they picked one made up of nearly fifty letters.

Again, a self-created problem.

Then, they issued a few new GACI organizational documents, but have still not provided any published statement or policy on what happens to the old IAF Mandatory Documents. Those MDs govern the bulk of the entire accreditation scheme, defining CB auditing practices, minimum audit duration, and rules for conducting remote audits. Legally, those documents no longer exist because IAF no longer exists.

GACI could have brought them over and published a statement saying, “Until further notice, the IAF MDs still apply,” but they haven’t. This means that technically, CBs don’t have to follow any rules now, since there are no actual rules!

Remember that IAF announced this merger years ago, and had all that time to begin updating the MDs and other IAF documents. It didn’t, because Victor Gandy is one guy, and he’s a lazy fuck. He’s only in this to pump IAF revenue to his made-up company, Axis Mundi, not to actually break a sweat.

Next, there’s IAF CertSearch. Despite the fact that IAF is dead, CertSearch is still branded as “IAF CertSearch” and still uses the defunct logo. They still have the IAF URL for the website, too. And, the entire thing is run by IAF Database LLC, which is a subsidiary of IAF… which (did I mention?) doesn’t exist anymore. I am not sure what happens to a subsidiary when the mother organization shuts down.

That hasn’t stopped the Australians at QualityTrade, who run IAF Certsearch, from continuing to scam the world while using the IAF name, like that plot to sell ISO certificates in bulk on Amazon.

Also, all the contracts between the parties, including ABs and CBs uploading data to CertSearch, are with the IAF company… not GACI. I don’t know how those survive the new company, and nobody at GACI has said anything, either.

Finally, whither ILAC? The stuffy lab accreditation oversight body has been ignored nearly entirely, and there has been no word at all on what ILAC procedures and rules are going to survive under GACI. It’s so bad, that former ILAC head Etty Feller, of Israel, appears to have disappeared off the map entirely. She has no role at all in the new GACI organization, and hasn’t said much about her future.

Right now, there is basically no one overseeing lab accreditations. Which isn’t saying much, since so much lab fraud was happening under Feller’s watch anyway.

I guess — maybe? — all of this will get sorted eventually. But these are important matters that should have been considered beforehand… here we are, one month after GACI launched, and they still haven’t figured any of this out. Worse, they are not communicating to anyone, and both CBs and lab accreditors are left wondering just what the hell is going on.

But they have mastered the art of posing for pictures and making their organization seem much, much larger than it actually is. This shot was taken from their recent “international meeting where you get to visit a fancy tourist resort and write it off on your taxes as a business expense.”