The ISO 42001 certification body Zertia has announced a partnership with an Indian consultancy called Ethically, in what appears to be an overt violation of ISO 17021-1 and Zertia’s own Impartiality Policy.
ISO 17201-1 prohibits a CB from partnering with any consultancy and from marketing its certification services alongside consulting. Nevertheless, Zertia published a post on LinkedIn announcing its partnership with Ethically. The post includes a custom graphic of the two companies’ logos with a handshake icon between them.
Zertia also claims to offer certification to ISO 27001 and ISO 27701. The CB appears to be a family-run business operated by José Manuel Mateu de Ros and Ana Mateu de Ros. It operates out of Madrid but claims to have an office in Florida, USA.
Zertia is not yet accredited to ISO 17021-1, but has filed an application with the US accreditation body, ANAB. The ANAB website lists Zertia as a current candidate CB as of November 2024. Oxebridge has written to ANAB to alert them of this pre-emptive violation of 17021-1.
Zertia has published a boilerplate Impartiality Policy on its website, which it is also violating by partnering with Ethically. That policy clearly states:
Zertia does not offer or provide management system consultancy, either directly or indirectly through other service providers.
Zertia does not endorse consultancy services.
Ethically operates out of Coimbatore, India, and appears to be a typical certificate mill, marketing both certification and consulting. It does not hold any accreditations as a certification body. It is operated by Sakthi Thangavelu, who claims to be a “certified Lead Implementer” for ISO 42001.
The arrangement between Zertia and Indian consultants appears to be a feature and not a bug. Zertia previously announced a partnership with FairNow, a provider of AI governance software. Under that arrangement, Zertia will audit clients who have used FairNow to build their ISO 42001 systems, an insurmountable conflict of interest that is prohibited by ISO 17021.
Zertia appears to think that such arrangements are not only acceptable, but the wave of the future. Arguing against “traditional certification” which firewalls certification bodies from consultants, Zertia claims its model will “enable innovation, not hinder it” and will “streamline evidence collection.”
In another LinkedIn post, Zertia referred to the current model of certification, which prohibits the arrangements Zertia is entering into, as “19th century” auditing. It then proposes to advance auditing by adopting what is, ironically, a fairly traditional certificate mill model, through an “end to end solution” that is “collaborative with top partners.” Zertia also refers to some method of “automated & AI-based” auditing that is not currently supported by ISO 19011 or ISO 17021.
In one video published in March of 2025, Zertia claims its auditors have over “ten years’ experience” in auditing ISO 42001, despite the fact that the standard was only published in 2023.
Despite all these issues, Zertia continues to brand its services as “ethical.”
ISO 42001 is ISO’s new standard on AI Management systems and has garnered much attention from scammers and certificate mill operators. The standard is being watched carefully as the European Union rolls out its AI Act product certification regulations for any company selling AI products in Europe.
The ISO 17021-1 prohibition against CBs partnering with consultancies is to ensure the trust and validity of resulting ISO certifications. If CBs partner with a consultant, they are unlikely to perform an objective audit of that consultant’s clients; instead, they are more likely to issue certificates even if the system under audit is nonconforming so that their partnership and financial arrangements are preserved.
Zertia has begun deleting LinkedIn comments and posts that are critical of its arrangement or which call out violations of ISO 17021.
UPDATE: Article was corrected to reflect that Ethically operates out of Coimbatore, India, not Mumbai.
UPDATE 14 April 2025: Additional reporting on Zertia’s partnership with FairNow and other LinkedIn press releases was added. In addition, as of today, ANAB has confirmed it is opening a complaint in its system related to Zertia and will investigate.
UPDATE 16 April 2025: Zertia CEO José Manuel Mateu de Ros has refused to comment directly to Oxebridge on the matter and blocked his account on LinkedIn. In an email sent to ANAB, Mateu de Ros claims that Zertia had based its partnership arrangements on “steps taken by other organizations in the field, such as Shellman and Align.” He then told ANAB, “If we’ve been misled, we are fully committed to making corrections after our clarifications with ANAB.” He characterized the formal complaint by Oxebridge as merely a “chain of unfortunate emails.” The efforts taken by Mateu de Ros to delete comments, block accounts, blame other CBs, and minimize the severity of the issue suggest Zertia is not abiding by ISO 17021-1’s requirements for impartiality and objectivity.
