Companies Bain & Co replaces SA head and offers to repay Sars fee The consultancy’s managing partner Vittorio Massone steps down BL PREMIUM

Consultancy Bain & Co has replaced its SA head and offered to pay back money earned for work done at the SA Revenue Service (Sars), which it admits was used for a “different agenda” than originally intended. Bain, one of the top three global consulting firms, said in a statement on Sunday that managing partner Vittorio Massone has stepped down and that it does not want to benefit financially from the work, for which it was paid R164m. The firm has become the latest multinational to be embroiled in state capture. It was contracted, allegedly via an irregular tender process, to overhaul the structure of Sars under suspended commissioner Tom Moyane when he took over in 2014.

The commission of inquiry into governance and administration at Sars, chaired by retired judge Robert Nugent, has heard how the increase in VAT for the first time in two decades — which has hit the economy and the poor hard — was necessary partly by the revenue shortfall of R50bn by Sars in 2017-18. The inqui...