A Boston Consulting Firm Became a Power Broker, and Then a Pariah, in South Africa

“I’m involved that we’re buying and selling off quick time period entry for long run points,” Ms. Miller wrote in an inside electronic mail in 2014.

She wrote that Bain was attempting to get well its repute after the presidential election in 2012, when the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, was criticized for his work on the consulting agency. Ms. Miller, who has since left Bain, didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Inside shows by Bain, handed over to the fee as proof, present that the corporate pitched proposals to Mr. Zuma to restructure different state-owned companies, like those that oversee communications and power, in order that Mr. Zuma would have direct oversight of them. This, the judicial fee stated, might break South African legal guidelines that forbid the top of state from immediately controlling state enterprises.

Mr. Massone and Mr. Zuma met 17 instances from 2012 to 2014. The fee’s report instructed that these conferences, and the truth that Bain knew who would grow to be the brand new head of the tax company — Tom Moyane — earlier than it was made public, had been proof of a plan between the consulting agency and the presidency to infiltrate the income service “and trigger injury to the establishment.”

Bain helped to organize Mr. Moyane, a Zuma loyalist, to take over the tax company as its new commissioner. Mr. Moyane is blamed for destabilizing the company and shedding hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in tax income.

On the time, Mr. Zuma was going through accusations of tax evasion, and the primary order of enterprise was to “neutralize” income service workers seen as obstacles, in keeping with proof offered through the inquiry. The inquiry report described Bain’s work with Mr. Moyane as “one of many clearest demonstrations of state seize,” a time period used to explain politically related people and companies getting wealthy off state companies.

Mr. Zuma was compelled to step down in 2018, after Cyril Ramaphosa grew to become head of the governing African Nationwide Congress. Promising to root out graft, Mr. Ramaphosa quickly fired Mr. Moyane. Mr. Moyane didn’t reply to a request for remark.