As expected, Mohan Sabaratnam and the International Accreditation Service (IAS) have blown off the evidence proving that AS9100 certification body KSQA falsified audit reports, and reissued their accreditation.
In a bizarre email to clients, KSQA head Kris Norlander announced that this resulted in a cost-reduction effort. In reality, it seems KSQA is trying to salvage clients by offering them a price break. Kinda sad.
If you recall, KSQA and Norlander were caught falsifying three years of audit reports by claiming off-site (remote) audits had actually been performed on-site. IAS verified the evidence directly with the client involved, but ignored it anyway, and granted KSQA its accreditation once again.
This comes after KSQA had previously been suspended in 2025 and then again in early 2026. In both cases, IAS refused to update its listings — as required by ISO 17011 — in an apparent attempt to protect KSQA and hoodwink the aerospace supply chain. KSQA also failed to notify its clients, and only did so recently after the reporting here on Oxebridge.
KSQA’s clients, meanwhile, were falsely flagged as “suspended” themselves, putting all their contracts at risk. Both Norlander and Sabaratnam downplayed the matter, not caring too much about what happened to the clients.
Meanwhile, the IAQG is not doing anything either. An OASIS complaint filed against IAS has gone unanswered and will “time out” after 120 days of inactivity. The IAQG does this to avoid having to answer complaints it doesn’t want to address. I can manually go in and keep it alive every few months, but they simply won’t ever reply. One complaint filed against BSI for fraud remained unanswered for nearly a decade until OASIS 2.0 rolled out, and all prior tickets were deleted entirely.
A complaint filed with Probitas against Norlander himself also appears stalled. Rich DeMary of Probitas confirmed the evidence of the audit report falsifications, but there has been no activity on that ticket either. It is likely that Probitas will also cover up for KSQA.
A check in OASIS shows that every person working at KSQA, except for a few auditors, is a Norlander family member. In each case, other family members signed off as having verified Kris Norlander’s false information. Again, IAS did nothing.
IAQG head Eric Jefferies has also ignored the problem.
The end result is that IAS and KSQA have sent a message that AS9100 auditors can falsify audit reports all they want and face no repercussions. This can lead to certificates being granted to companies that were never audited at all, or that are shipping deadly, defective products for installation on aircraft and spacecraft. No one — not IAS, IAQG, Probitas or the CBs — seems to care, provided they get their money.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this appears to be criminal fraud that puts the flying public, military personnel, and astronauts at risk of being killed.
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
