You have heard the news that they are having an Idols final vote recount, right? No, I’m not kidding.

Let’s break it down. This, from News24:

Cape Town – M-Net has announced that they have begun to audit votes for Idols because of “system problems“.

“The moment we were alerted to possible system problems, we contacted the mobile network operators to request additional data, which could be verified by independent auditors,” said Theo Erasmus, Channel Director: General Entertainment of M-Net SA in a statement.

The winner of the fifth season of the reality show is determined by public vote and several News24 users reported that their votes – particularly for Jason – didn’t go through.

M-Net said that “an unprecedented number of votes were received for the two finalists, Sasha Lee Davids and Jason Hartman”, but discovered that many SMS votes were received after the cut-off time on Sunday evening.

[more here]

But if I remember correctly there was a massive song and dance about the incredibly amazing Alexander Forbes who were handling the auditing of the Idols votes. It was quite ridiculous actually. They even mentioned the guy’s name as he came on stage with the envelope – you could have sworn he was from the IEC.

Now from where I’m sitting, the very minimal that Alexander Forbes had to do for their paid-for exposure, was count votes and to ensure the integrity of the voting process. That’s why you get auditors – they check the systems and processes involved in accumulating the data. Right?

And now you’re telling me that a television company has spotted a glitch in the system which the auditors didn’t?

That doesn’t sound right?

Maybe they were only worried about getting paid, rather than doing their job?

One can’t help but recall Alexander Forbes’s last scandal, involving the misappropriation of pension funds a couple years back. Something reminiscent of the recent Madoff balls up. This, from Personal Finance:

A major retirement fund administrator skimmed off millions of rands in ‘secret profits’ at the expense of funds and, ultimately, members’ benefits.

Dual London- and Johannesburg-listed financial services company Alexander Forbes, which is one of the country’s biggest administrators of retirement funds, has become the subject of major investigations into the “not lawful” plundering of retirement fund savings.

This week, Peter Martin, a former actuary, and Neil van Hees, the former marketing director of an asset management company associated with Alexander Forbes, appeared in leg irons in the Johannesburg Commercial Court following a four-year investigation into pension fund fraud totalling R213 million. They were both employed by Alexander Forbes at the time the alleged offences took place in the 1990s.

The two were arrested along with other top people in the financial services industry, including Aubrey Wynne-Jones, who heads another significant retirement fund administration company, Wynne-Jones & Company. More arrests, including other former senior staff of Alexander Forbes, are likely to follow.

The investigations also involve other major companies, including Old Mutual, its subsidiary, Nedbank, and Sanlam, although the extent of their involvement is not known to Personal Finance at this stage. There has been no suggestion that they were involved in criminal activity.

And a separate six-month-long investigation by Personal Finance has confirmed that Alexander Forbes has been “not lawfully” making “secret profits” from about 950 retirement funds (with millions of members) that it administers on behalf of many companies in South Africa.

Alexander Forbes has been attempting to keep the scandal of the “not lawful” profits out of the public eye and away from the scrutiny of retirement fund trustees by reaching secret settlements, involving tens of millions of rands, with retirement funds that uncovered the “not lawful” activities.

Personal Finance can reveal that for many years Alexander Forbes was making “secret profits” at the expense of retirement funds and, ultimately, at the expense of members’ retirement benefits. And to exacerbate the situation, Alexander Forbes continued to do so for at least two years after it received legal opinion in August 2002 that the practice was “not lawful”.

[more here]

And this, from Noseweek:

The “reassignment” of members’ reserves was pioneered by a company called Alexander Forbes – yes, the same company that has recently been caught enriching itself at the expense of pension fund members by using a process called “bulking”. In the early 1980s, under the direction of managers/owners such as Graham Kerrigon, Alexander Forbes were able to convince most of the captains of industry that by allowing Alexander Forbes to manage their company pension funds they would be able to release billions of rands that the company could use for its own agendas – a veritable trove of pension contraband.

A whole new pension fund “industry” was born.

Thanks to the illusions created by Alexander Forbes, millions of working South Africans, ignorant of these machinations, agreed to sign away huge chunks of their pension benefits, believing their best interests were being looked after and guarded by the Actuarial Society of South Africa, the Financial Services Board, the trustees and the auditors.

Suddenly, more than R200-billion started to “grow on trees”. Conflicts of interest were ignored, and good governance was thrown to the wind by the custodians of working people’s retirement benefits. Professional integrity became the joke of the day. As in a drunken orgy, enhanced profits and reduced company liabilities materialized out of nowhere. Trustees, many of whom were on company incentive schemes as executive directors, began receiving “very special” enhancements to their packages and retirement benefits. The deafening silence was sickening. Those paid to protect members’ best interests, the actuaries the trustees, the lawyers and the auditors, just rubber-stamped the obscene frenzy of predators. Ministers of finance, the previous pension fund adjudicator and the FSB, all looked on in silence, apparently awed by the scale of the exercise and the expertise of the rogues.

[more here]

It makes sense that a show like Idols which was a shambles from the start, should employ an “independent” auditing company drenched in scandal. Save for Gareth Cliff, the country is unanimous (we’ll get KPMG to check this one) in agreement that the judges were the most unprofessional choices, with their own little scandals erupting throughout the competition.

Back to these two dears. Latest reports (here) tell us that both finalists are now receiving counseling.

Sasha Lee, look at me. Now listen carefully, my angel. Get a good lawyer and milk these clowns. Do it now.

Jason, if you were smart, you would pick up the phone, call KPMG and urgently put together an ad campaign which will be hailed as “genius” for years to come.

Personally, I don’t really care about who won what. What I do care about is the fact that South African television is missing out on so much good content and quality productions due to the tangled mess of red tape, in-fucking and back scratching which results in below par dumbed-down TV shows with the wrong people involved and even worse people in charge.

It’s a very sad state of affairs.