If the sun has risen somewhere on the planet, you know that it means the plucky ISO experts in India have cooked up yet another way to rip off people. Now comes evidence that an ISO certification body has issued at least one ISO 17025 certificate; the problem is that only accreditation bodies can issue those, and CBs cannot.
LMS Certifications (which, as Indian CBs tend to do, uses a variety of alternate names, like LMS Certificate Limited, LMS Certification, LMS Certifications Pvt. Ltd, LMS Assessment Management Services, and Linear Management Systems) issued an ISO 17025 certificate to Pakistani company AR Voltcal Solutions. The certificate even includes the logos of its accreditation body, EGAC, and the IAF (now rebranded as “Global ACI.”)
The certificate issued to AR Voltac is listed on the official LMS website, too, so it’s not some photoshopped fake meant to discredit Singh:
LMS is actually accredited by EGAC, the Egyptian accreditation body, but not for the issuance of ISO 17025 certificates. Again, this is because LMS is a CB, not an AB, and only ABs can issue those. In fact, EGAC itself is one of the ABs that does this, meaning EGAC’s client is poaching their own client base.
EGAC is famously corrupt, though, and has a history of ignoring outright fraud by its accredited CB clients, so it remains uncertain if they even care about any of this.
LMS is run by a fairly notorious figure in Indian ISO circles, Dr. Pushpendr Singh. I can’t tell you just how many scam reports I have received about Singh, but he generally covers his tracks just enough to make the reports fizzle out quickly.
What is known is that Singh is behind the (largely fake) accreditation body, Pennsylvania Accreditation Centre, which pretends to be a US body, but — like IAS and UAF before it — is actually run out of India. To date, PAC has not gotten into the IAF fold, but that is likely to happen, since no one cares about rules anymore. (The Indians apparently didn’t know that, in the US, it’s spelled “center,” not “centre.”)
One of PAC’s alleged “accredited” CBs is Staunchly Management and System Services, for which Pushpendr Singh — and you saw this coming — acts as a director. Another listed director for Staunchly is Luxmi Singh, who is also the Executive Director for PAC. And PAC-accredited body A-Mark Ratings Ltd. also has Singh listed as a Director.
So, yes, Singh created an AB to accredit his own CBs, and EGAC is cool with that.
Pushpendr Singh is listed as a director of at least seventeen companies in India, including Lei System & Registry Services, Integral Certification and ICRS Management Systems. So far, those don’t appear to claim accreditation, whether fake or otherwise.
But I suppose with that much scamming in his system, it was inevitable he’d start issuing fake ISO 17025 certificates, too. One wonders what took him so long.
I’ve sent a complaint to LMS and copied EGAC and Global ACI, but I don’t expect much response. The Global ACI has abandoned its oversight duties entirely, and the CBs and ABs know it. They can do whatever they want now, and so long as governments don’t hold them accountable under anti-fraud laws, there is not much anyone can do about it.
Prediction: I either hear nothing, or I get back one of those on-brand Indian responses where they falsely accuse me of blackmail or extortion or murder while accusing me of being unprofessional. I will update this as the scandal unfolds.
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
