PRETORIA - Consulting agency Bain and Company's managing partner has left the Nugent Commission of Inquiry in shock on Friday, after he revealed that he met with suspended SA Revenue Services (Sars) commissioner Tom Moyane to discuss the institution a year before he became commissioner.
Vittorio Massone who appeared before the commission, said meeting Moyane before he was appointed as commissioner was not unusual because he believes Moyane had ambitions to be head of Sars.
After receiving a call from Moyane, Massone explained that they met and spent a couple of days putting a document together.
Massone said he gave Moyane a positive point of view which he collected on the press, websites and publicly available data. He said he was not paid for his work.
Bain's model has come under fire for fracturing pivotal units including the ability to measure compliance and the capability to deal with illicit financial flows and high profile investigations.
Earlier, Solly Tshitangano, a deputy director general and acting chief procurement officer at the National Treasury told the commission that
Bain was not appointed properly and the process leading up to its appointment was flawed with several red flags.
Tshitangano said the tender period for the Sars turnaround plan was very short about a week. This was under the 21 days that usual applies for state tenders.
He said Treasury never received any letters from Sars on why the tender period had been reduced to a week, saying that a number of issues around the tender were strange.
Bain further bid with a 50% discount that put it just under the bid of its closest competitor.
Judge Dennis Davis told the commission that he never understood what was the need for restructuring.
He said he only saw some of the plans before the changes were instituted.
"Mr Moyane wouldn't give us one. In many instances we couldn't get figures. Our information dried up, we were working without any cooperation from Sars at all," he said.
Davis said everything that is coming out now in the commission is not new information, it was known but officials were afraid to speak out in fear of losing their jobs.
He said officials spoke to him privately about problems.