The Accenture Files

Introduction

Today, the Progressive International, Expose Accenture and the Movement Research Unit release the Accenture Files, revealing the central role of the world’s largest consultancy in the global right-ward turn towards surveillance, exclusion, and strong-men: The Reactionary International.

Based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and a comprehensive review of internal documents, our investigation demonstrates how Accenture has quietly embedded itself deep into the apparatus of security states worldwide, deploying its vast network of resources, wealth and technology to surveil entire populations, fuel the military-industrial complex and channel immense public wealth to private hands.

Our research — spanning over 41 contract case studies across North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia — reveals that Accenture has joined forces with some of the world’s most notorious tech surveillance giants to advance an agenda of extraction, exploitation and oppression. We discovered, for example, that the firm has joined forces with Peter Thiel’s Palantir to ensure their influence stretches right to the centre of government. In Britain, this partnership has already seen the companies secure a contract worth almost £500 million with the National Health Service, accelerating the institution's privatisation by some of the world’s largest multinational outfits.

Such contracts, however, are just one example of how Accenture is empowered to shape the world around us. From biometric databases which catalogue billions of people to predictive policing algorithms that target individuals before they've committed any crime, our research identifies Accenture as central to the operation of the world’s reactionary forces.

However, our investigation uncovered gaping cracks in Accenture’s operation, long concealed by a thin veneer of corporate legitimacy. Connecting the dots in the firm’s global activity, we found a catalogue of scandal and failure. Our research studies the myriad of lucrative contracts which Accenture has won from government’s around the world to reveal a consistent pattern of bid-rigging, corruption and neglect. Never before have these ties to the world’s states been collated in such a manner.

Operating in the shadows, Accenture has escaped accountability and evaded public scrutiny for far too long. Today, we initiate the process of bringing their nefarious activities and nebulous relationships to light.

Origins: From Accounting Scandal to Border Surveillance Empire

Accenture originated from Arthur Andersen, Enron's notorious accounting firm. Operating as Andersen's business and technology consulting division in the early 1950s, it rebranded as Accenture in 2001 amid the Enron accounting scandal. That same year, Accenture made history as the first major professional services firm to incorporate offshore in Bermuda, likely for tax benefits, before later moving to Ireland where it secured a tax rate of just 3.5% compared to 24% in the UK.

The firm rose rapidly through the ranks of America's IT government contractors climbing from 59th to 24th in just three years following the 9/11 terror attacks. Today, Accenture ranks 8th in US contractors and has engagements with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and ICE among others. This ascent was largely powered by a single contract between Accenture and the Department of Homeland Security to build the US-VISIT program, which established the foundation for the United States' biometric surveillance state.

The US-VISIT program, a cornerstone of Washington’s security architecture amidst the ‘War on Terror’, involved creating the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) — then the largest biometric database in the US and second-largest in the world, containing information on some 200 million people who had entered or exited the country.

US-VISIT shares biometric data with the CIA, FBI, DHS, Border Patrol, and more. Under the contract, Accenture gave the US the capability to record the comings and goings of non-citizens at over 400 ports of entry through digital finger scans and digital photographs.

Internal emails later revealed that Accenture had advised the Department of Homeland Security to "limit the number of bidders" in order to capture the contract. The company even moved into government offices where the work would be carried out four months before the contract was awarded.

Propelled to prominence with the support of the US state, today Accenture employs three-quarters of a million people and boasts more than 200 offices – one of which hosts an Israeli consulate – across 49 countries. The firm generated $64.1 billion of revenue in 2023 alone.

The Accenture-Palantir Alliance: Merging Consultancy with Surveillance

Our investigation reveals that in recent years Accenture has cemented a global partnership with Palantir, the controversial data analytics firm founded by Peter Thiel that has faced criticism for its role in enabling deportations, predictive policing, and military targeting operations. This alliance represents a dangerous convergence of Accenture's public sector reach with Palantir's surveillance capabilities.

In 2022, we found that Accenture launched a new innovation center with Palantir to design technological solutions using Palantir Foundry — a central operating software that optimizes big data to support decision-making across industries. The following year, the partnership secured a £480 million contract to deliver the Federated Data Platform for NHS England, despite protests from healthcare workers concerned about patient privacy and Palantir's links to military operations. It is also important to note that the NHS data is considered one of the most valuable datasets in the world.

In 2023, Accenture made a $3 billion investment in its AI capabilities. Our research uncovered that both Accenture and Palantir participated in the inaugural "AI for War" conference in 2024, highlighting their shared commitment to militarizing artificial intelligence. Indeed, Palantir works closely with Israeli intelligence and has a role in the IDF’s system which generates targets for bombing raids.

This strategic alliance amplifies both companies' capacities to build and deploy international surveillance systems. While Palantir has gained notoriety for its work with intelligence agencies and military clients, Accenture has managed to maintain a lower public profile while facilitating similar capabilities through government contracts worldwide.

The Biometric Borderlands: Accenture's Global Surveillance Architecture

Accenture's handling of biometric data and risk-assessment algorithms during the US-VISIT program established the technological foundation for the detention and interrogation regime of the post-9/11 years. It provided Accenture with the expertise and government connections to expand its biometric surveillance business around the world.

In 2010, our investigation discovered that Accenture secured a contract with India to implement the "Aadhaar" program – now the world's largest biometric database with information on 1.3 billion people. We learnt that the contract affords Accenture the right to "use, store, transfer, process, and link" data to any individual.

In 2015, Accenture developed a "global" biometric identity management system (BIMS) for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to collect and analyze the biometric data of over 450,000 refugees in Thailand and Chad, stating they were looking for more opportunities to "spread BIMS worldwide."

More recently, our investigation found that Accenture was awarded a contract worth between €50-100 million by the Finnish Migri Immigration Service to automate the permit process for migration to Finland.

Accenture's vision for border security, outlined in internal documents, describes a "futuristic surveillance and intelligence network" relying on "databases, digital cameras, face- and voice-recognition systems and electronic-fingerprint readers, all linked by computer." As our investigation reveals, this vision has steadily materialized through contracts with border security agencies around the world, placing private actors like Accenture at the centre of fortifying the world’s borders.

In promotional materials for their refugee biometric systems, we found that Accenture used the image of a young Syrian boy who had drowned to highlight the "humanitarian crisis," while simultaneously writing that "there are terrorists who choose to pose as refugees."

An employee of the Department for Homeland Security bluntly relayed the implications of Accenture’s population-management systems: "The only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling."

Algorithmic Policing: Predicting "Crime" Before It Happens

Beyond border security, Accenture has aggressively marketed "predictive policing" and risk-assessment algorithms to law enforcement agencies worldwide. In 2014, our investigation found that Accenture created risk scores to determine the likelihood that individuals were linked to known gangs for London’s Metropolitan Police. At the time, privacy campaigners warned that the program was indiscriminately gathering data and making life-altering classifications of people without warrants or due process.

Our investigation uncovered at least 13 police forces across three continents that have contracted with Accenture for predictive policing technologies. In the UK alone, Accenture has secured contracts with the Metropolitan Police (£80 million in 2016), West Midlands Police (£25 million in 2014, £5 million in 2019), Sussex Police (£29 million in 2017), and Police Scotland (£46 million in 2013, later canceled).

The Metropolitan Police entered into a "Digital Policing Framework Agreement" with Accenture in 2017, essentially establishing the company as a preferred long-term supplier that could secure future public work without further tendering processes. This arrangement follows a pattern our investigators have observed across multiple countries, where Accenture first secures IT modernization contracts before pushing more invasive surveillance technologies.

In the United States, Accenture has worked with police departments in Seattle, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. In 2017, Accenture implemented predictive policing for the Seattle Police Department to "predict crime" before it happened and to leverage body-worn cameras to vindicate officers accused in use-of-force cases. That same year, Accenture developed a risk score for every person receiving welfare in Rotterdam, Netherlands, to predict who was likely "cheating" on their benefits. A Wired report found the algorithm was consistently biased along lines of gender and ethnicity, with a review concluding it "performs little better than random selection."

In 2019, Accenture created a system for the West Midlands Police in the UK that uses AI, statistics, and police data to identify individuals "at risk of committing future crimes" for additional police monitoring and targeting.

We found that Accenture is currently working with police forces in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to use algorithms to target people before they've ever committed a crime, with a managing director for Accenture Digital stating they are "trying to do facial recognition to understand the mood of the crowd."

Accenture’s Chief Risk Officer has previously stated that the company doesn't want to "get to the point where we're arresting people before they commit a crime, but the idea of using analytics is to predict likely behavior" — a troubling framing that still assumes the capability to identify ‘pre-criminals’ is both possible and desirable.

Connecting the Dots: The Israel-India-Accenture Nexus

Among the most concerning aspects of Accenture's global operations which our investigation uncovered is the firm’s role in facilitating the transfer of military and surveillance technologies between countries, particularly Israel and India.

In 2017, we found that Accenture began championing military and intelligence ties between the two nations, proposing partnerships where "Israeli defense companies [could] leverage India's engineering talent to develop a global maintenance fleet for servicing defense equipment globally." That same year, over $2 billion worth of defense technologies were exported from Israel to India. “In the policing space in India, we are leveraging a lot of these things that we are doing in other countries," said Accenture Managing Director for Advanced Analytics. Meanwhile, as Accenture brokered Israel-India weapons, surveillance, and police technology transfers, India began to abandon its longstanding support of Palestinian liberation, abstaining from votes which advocated for a “humanitarian truce” at the UN.

One year earlier, Accenture acquired the Israeli cyberwarfare firm Maglan, "a team of highly skilled cybersecurity professionals, who honed their skills fighting cyber crime and confronting cyber espionage around the globe." The company is named after the Maglan Special Forces Unit of the Israeli military, which has been implicated in numerous controversial operations including the 1996 Lebanon massacre, 2014 Gaza missions, 2020 killings in the Golan Heights, and on-video killings of individuals with raised hands. To this day, on LinkedIn Accenture Israel is called “Accenture Security Israel (Maglan)”.

Our research reveals that Accenture has also invested in Team8, an Israeli cybersecurity company founded by Nadav Zafrir – former Commander of Israel's Technology & Intelligence Unit 8200. Unit 8200, Israel's equivalent to the NSA, has faced criticism from its own veterans, with 43 signing a protest letter in 2014 decrying what they called the unit's abusive gathering of Palestinians' private information.

What’s more, we discovered that Accenture collaborates with NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies) on the IINSPIRE (Israel-India Startup Platform for Innovative Research and Entrepreneurship) initiative. This platform aims to drive innovation synergies between India and Israel, fostering a structured and systematic approach to surveillance and oppression of Palestinians. Indeed, Accenture bosses in India and Israel have declared their shared intent to take the states’ cybersecurity and defence relationship “to the next level”.

In June 2024, our investigation found that Accenture announced a strategic collaboration with major US weapons developer L3Harris – a top supplier of component parts for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 warplanes, which were instrumental in Israel’s 15-month bombardment of the Gaza Strip from October 2023.

Our investigation uncovered just some of the real-world consequences of the technology transfer facilitated by Accenture. Indian officials have been documented using Israeli drone technology to monitor protests and drop tear gas, while Israeli drones were used against Palestinian protesters during the Great March of Return. Our research found that both nations have consistently deployed extensive CCTV networks, facial recognition systems, and surveillance software like Pegasus to target journalists, activists, and minorities.

Technology summary

The Scandal Factory: A Global Pattern of Corruption and Failure

Our investigation has identified a disturbing pattern across Accenture's operations: the company secures lucrative contracts, often through questionable means, delivers substandard results, and yet continues to win new business. The scandal trail spans continents and decades:

Angola

• Angola's Dos Santos Contracts (2020): Accenture received $54 million for work with Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angola's autocratic then-president, as part of a system that gave legitimacy to her empire while she laundered money.

Australia

• Australian Border Force (2015-2017): Accenture's $17.6 million contract with the Australian Department of Home Affairs to create a US-style "super-department" was cut short due to dissatisfaction with performance and concerns over costs outweighing savings.

Brazil

• Brazil's DataPrev (2020): Despite previous controversy where Accenture failed to deliver a contracted platform service, the company won a $1.5 million contract to manage the sale of Brazil's state-owned firms, including the social security technology company DataPrev, amid widespread labor union protests against privatization.

Europe

• Scotland Police (2013): Accenture was awarded a fixed-price contract worth over $58 million to build a national IT system. Within weeks, despite 18 months of pre-award discussion, disagreements emerged about whether the proposed system would deliver the requirements. The contract was canceled, and Accenture had to pay a $14.8 million settlement.
• UK NHS Digital (2018-19): NHS Digital awarded contracts worth £33 million to Accenture, representing 15% of its total operating expenditure that year. This raised conflict of interest concerns as two NHS Digital board members had previously worked at Accenture. Notably, Matthew Swindells, Deputy Chief Executive of NHS England until 2019, left in 2019 to be a freelancer for Accenture's digital arm.
• Accenture German Contracting Scandal (2020): German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen was investigated for her ministry preferentially advantaging Accenture.
• Luxembourg Tax Scandal (2019): Accenture paid Swiss authorities approximately $200 million over tax claims prompted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' Luxembourg Leaks investigation, which uncovered 546 secret tax deals involving more than 1,000 businesses.

United States

• US Customs and Border Protection (2018-2019): Accenture was awarded a $297 million contract to recruit 7,500 border agents. After 10 months and $13.6 million spent, they had produced only "two accepted job offers." The contract was eventually canceled after the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General issued a scathing report.
• Ohio Office of Budget and Management (2007): A backup tape containing sensitive financial information was stolen from an Accenture intern's car. Accenture was using the information to develop a similar system for Ohio without proper authorization. The Governor initiated a review of the contract, and the Attorney General filed a civil complaint against Accenture.
• US Marine Corps (2005): A six-month contract to implement a new global supply chain and maintenance system was terminated after Accenture "did not meet the contract's requirements, terms and conditions."
• Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (2002): Accenture was awarded $50 million in contracts to re-engineer the state's unemployment insurance and voting systems. The company missed deadlines and was found to be in breach of contract, eventually refunding $8.2 million on one contract while the other was terminated.

These failures represent just a fraction of the problematic contracts our investigation has uncovered. This series of scandals, however, has had minimal impact on Accenture's ability to secure new state business — pointing to Accenture’s nebulous and covert relationships with government actors around the world.

The Global Architecture of Reaction

Around the world, the willingness of governments to empower consultancy firms like Accenture is only growing.

Since 2016, the consulting industry has expanded steadily in nearly every country:

• In the United Kingdom, contracts outsourced to consultants increased by over 370% to $3.95 billion from 2016 to 2022. Accenture alone received £350 million from the UK Government in 2023/2025 as a designated "Strategic Supplier."
• In France, consultants received over $2.6 billion in contracts since 2018.
• In Canada, the government’s spending on third-party consultants ballooned to $16.4 billion in 2019-2020.

With exorbitant hourly rates and a lack of true expertise, firms like Accenture drive up the cost of public services, deliver "market-based" solutions that further privatize the public sector, and hamstring governments' ability to quickly respond to crises themselves.

Our investigation demonstrates that in nearly every country in which it operates, Accenture serves as an anti-democratic force that helps to siphon public money away from the people toward the ruling class.

From weapons contracts with Israel to surveillance contracts with India, we have revealed how Accenture is embedded worldwide as a provider of repressive technologies to authoritarian governments.

Our investigation demonstrates how Accenture's work informs who is designated as a "foreigner" or "risky," and in turn, who should be eligible for government benefits, detained for questioning, deported, and potentially targeted in military campaigns. Consequently, the world’s largest consultancy firm can be understood to form the backbone of the Reactionary International.

A Call to Investigators

Companies like Palantir and Lockheed Martin are well-known as providers of sinister and deadly technologies. When these companies' names are attached to a project, the world keeps a close eye. Accenture belongs in a similar category of notoriety, yet it has largely escaped such scrutiny, operating behind a veneer of corporate respectability.

When Accenture is involved in a government deal, our investigation demonstrates some common themes, from bid fixing to predictive policing, "smart" borders to the targeting of racial minorities. Yet most of the firm’s contracts remain hidden from public view.

We need more investigators to examine Accenture’s local contracts, their contents, and their implications for civil liberties and human rights. The world’s largest consultancy company has built a global surveillance syndicate that enables state violence and undermines democratic governance. It's time to pull back the curtain on one of the most powerful yet least scrutinized components of the Reactionary International.