A critical part of a global consulting firm’s $208-million federal agreement to administer Ottawa’s pandemic business-loan program was done from the firm’s Brazilian offices, a revelation that contradicts the government’s past assertions that virtually all the work was done in Canada.
The Globe and Mail first revealed in February that Accenture, which has headquarters in Dublin, was given a series of sole-source contracts to administer the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) program. CEBA was the most widely used pandemic support for businesses, with more than $49-billion of loans provided to almost 900,000 companies.
Accenture’s CEBA agreement is one of the largest contracts Ottawa has ever signed with a consulting firm. The deal was never proactively disclosed, and opposition politicians have raised it as an example of opaque and expensive outsourcing decisions, which the government has since promised to crack down on.
Parliamentary hearings this year on alleged misconduct in federal contracts have exposed complicated webs of subcontracting and triggered an RCMP investigation and reviews by federal departments.
As part of its reporting earlier this year, The Globe asked the Finance Department where the Accenture employees working on CEBA were based. The department said in June that the firm had 129 employees working on the program – 125 in Canada and four in the U.S.
But a recent review of information tabled in Parliament, as well as in Accenture job postings and on LinkedIn, shows that some software development work was done from the firm’s Brazilian offices and by its subsidiaries – primarily by a team called One Financial, formed from a São Paulo-based technology company called Vivere that Accenture acquired in 2013.
A list of Accenture contracts tabled in the Senate in October said One Financial was delivering “loan accounting” software that would be “one of the most critical components” in collecting CEBA loans. Two of the contract amendments, worth more than $23-million and signed in November, 2022, and January, 2023, specifically mentioned the “loan accounting system.” However, the document does not explain what One Financial itself is.
Export Development Canada, a Crown corporation that is working with Accenture on CEBA, provided more information on Nov. 23. “One Financial (originally branded Vivere), owned by Accenture, delivered the Loan Accounting System (LAS),” EDC spokesperson Shelley MacLean said in a statement.
The system, which will go live next year, stores the information of CEBA loans that go into default. Ms. MacLean said it will enable the sharing of information between financial institutions and the Canada Revenue Agency for the purposes of collecting payments on loans, which come due at various points in 2024.
The Globe asked how many employees in Brazil were involved with CEBA and why they were not included in the government’s previous response. Spokespeople for EDC and the Finance Department repeatedly said an answer was forthcoming, but as of Dec. 14, none has been provided.
Katherine Cuplinskas, spokesperson for Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, was also not able to provide more information. “Export Development Canada, through its arm’s length operations, independently decided to award this contract,” Ms. Cuplinskas said in a statement. “The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance was not involved in this process.”
Accenture declined to comment and said The Globe should ask the government for information about the contract.
NDP MP Gord Johns, who sits on the government operations committee that has been investigating outsourcing contracts this year, said it was “deeply disturbing” that the government and Accenture had not been more forthcoming about where the CEBA work was being done.
“The volume of outsourcing is just skyrocketing,” he said. “And taxpayers’ dollars are being spent outside of Canada to build a system to chase small business owners within Canada.”
He likened the lack of transparency to other contracts the committee has investigated this year, such as those given to IT staffing firms that collected large commissions for subcontracting work to other firms. He said he planned to bring a motion to the committee to study the Accenture CEBA contract.
Conservative senators Don Plett and Yonah Martin, who have asked questions in the Senate about the contract, said they were also concerned about the lack of transparency and wondered whether the government knew the work was being outsourced to Brazil.
“Someone needs to be held accountable for this mess,” Ms. Martin said in an e-mail.
U.S. security filings list Vivere Brasil Serviços e Soluções SA as one of Accenture’s 15 subsidiaries in Brazil and one of more than 600 subsidiaries worldwide.
In a 2013 news release about the Vivere acquisition, Accenture said the deal would allow the two companies to increase their capacity to process loans in partnerships with banks.
The focus has been on mortgages and auto loans. A recent job posting on Accenture’s website advertised an opening for a consultant based in São Paulo to develop new financing products for One Financial, specifically vehicle loans.
The LinkedIn profile of one Brazil-based employee of an Accenture subsidiary even lists “One Financial – CEBA” as a project they worked on starting in November, 2022. They describe it in Portuguese as a loan management platform.
With a report from Tom Cardoso
Chris Hannay