It’s a bad day year to be the Egyptian accreditation body EGAC. As a flood of scandals emerge, showing a pattern of corrupt practices by its stable of accredited certification bodies in India, EGAC is doubling down and threatening complainants (including myself) while making up interpretations of ISO 17011 to suit its own agenda.
As we reported earlier, a whistleblower unrelated to Oxebridge reported a huge set of allegations against various Indian CBs, with the common theme being they were issuing ISO certificates outside of the scope of accreditation granted to them by EGAC. To date, nearly two dozen suspect certificates have been reported.
EGAC, showing all the professionalism and courtesy of an angry toddler having a tantrum in a supermarket parking lot, has taken a bizarre posture that seems to want to accomplish a lot of things all at once. First, they have relentlessly insisted they need the identities of the various complainants, even though everyone involved did so using their names. Next, they insisted the complaints were due to some conspiracy to embarrass EGAC, as if were were competing ABs (we’re not.) Then, they said that doxxing complainants is a requirement of ISO 17011, when — I can assure you — it most certainly is not. Finally, they insist they will process the complaints and investigate, while at the same time openly defaming everyone involved.
In the end, EGAC has proven to be paranoid and conspiratorial, and has spent more time worrying about who filed the complaints — and why — rather than investigating them as they are required to do.
(It’s not proven, but the common thinking is that EGAC is known in the region for being lax in its oversight, which is why so many Indian CBs pursue accreditation by them instead of the NABCB in India. The IAF multilateral agreement makes all this “doctor shopping” possible.)
Vanathi Srinivasan
Now a new scandal has emerged, one which is being reported broadly in India and which puts EGAC in an impossible situation.
One of EGAC’s accredited certification bodies, QRO Certification, has now been caught issuing an ISO 9001 certificate to an Indian MLA (member of the legislative assembly), Vanathi Srinivasan of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Here’s one of the Indian press releases on the subject:
The story was also published in the Times of India.
There’s a lot to unpack here, but as we dig, it gets a lot worse – fast.
First, a CB obviously cannot issue an ISO 9001 certificate to a person, since the standard is designed to certify the quality management system of an organization. On Twitter, some posts have tried to spin this certificate as having been issued to Vanathi’s office in Coimbathore, but that’s not how the certificate itself is worded. It’s overtly clear the certificate was issued to Vanathi herself, as an individual:
Since QRO was one of the EGAC-accredited bodies that was reported previously for issuing out-of-scope certificates, so I suspect no one is surprised that there are problems with the certificate.
But some smart folks then identified yet another conflict of interest. The head of QRO is one Shalu Gupta, who also happens to be the social media manager for Vanathi’s BJP party:
This means that Gupta used her position as the head of an EGAC-accredited CB to help promote a political candidate he works for as her side hustle. And she did that by issuing Vanathi a certificate for something you can’t issue to individual people.
Meanwhile, this is blowing up on Twitter.
IAF Silent, As Usual
Given their response to date, I think we can assume EGAC will just claim some grand conspiracy, saying that Vanathi colluded with Oxebridge to sacrifice her entire political career just to embarrass them, or some nonsense.
This creates an impossible scenario for everyone involved. If EGAC does its job and tosses out the QRO certification issued to Vanathi, it may well have to answer to the Indian government for a massive embarrassment. If EGAC does nothing, it continues to prove it has no concern for any of the ISO 17011 accreditation rules, and can’t be trusted in the international marketplace.
In the meantime, EGAC’s refusal to process a formal complaint filed against them by me now means we will escalate to the IAF. The problem, however, is that EGAC is a member of multiple IAF regional bodies, and it’s not at all clear which one should receive the complaint. This labyrinthine arrangement suits the parties, of course, since one of the rules is always that a complaint be filed with the appropriate body; each of the parties can then insist they are not the appropriate party, and the complaint gets killed before it’s ever processed. Convenient arrangement for the IAF.
Meanwhile, the IAF’s new Secretary, Victor Gandy, has been alerted of this mess, but — in keeping with the practices of his predecessor Elva Nilsen — isn’t saying anything.
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
