AFRINIC’s court cases: what the Supreme Court of Mauritius decided

Since 2021 the Supreme Court of Mauritius has ruled on this dispute many times.

These are the decisions that shaped it, and the Public Record lists every one. The Court restrained AFRINIC three times from ending our membership. It rejected AFRINIC’s claim that we were abusing the Court’s process. On our application it placed AFRINIC in receivership, finding the orders we sought “fully justified, reasonable, and fair”, and the appeal against that failed. On our motion it set the deadline for AFRINIC’s elections. And on AFRINIC’s own application it ordered that we be entered in AFRINIC’s register of members.

In 2021 AFRINIC’s management, and then its Board, moved to end our membership, which would have taken back the addresses our customers’ networks run on.

The Judge in Chambers stopped it three times. On 29 March 2021 the Court restrained AFRINIC from terminating, suspending or revoking our membership. On 13 July 2021 it restrained AFRINIC from acting on its Board resolution of 8 July, from freezing or reclaiming the addresses allocated to us and from denying us access to its WHOIS database; that order was “deliberately flouted” by those then running AFRINIC, as the judgment of 19 July 2022 records, and on 15 July AFRINIC gave the Judge an unconditional undertaking to comply. When AFRINIC’s management wrote on 1 December 2021 that our services “may come to an end at any time”, the Court, on 3 December, restrained AFRINIC from terminating our membership pending the final determination of the dispute, and from acting in breach of its undertaking. On 23 July 2021 the Commercial Division had also authorised us, in support of our claim for damages, to attach up to USD 50 million held in AFRINIC’s name at two banks.

AFRINIC told the Court that our applications were an abuse of its process.

In its judgment of 19 July 2022, reported as 2022 SCJ 253, the Judge in Chambers rejected that, finding that a new circumstance had prompted each of our applications. Cloud Innovation, the Court held, “cannot be taxed for resorting to an independent court to safeguard its rights”, and upholding AFRINIC’s objection “would imperil the future administration of justice”. The Court declined to treat us as a vexatious litigant. The same judgment records that the letter from AFRINIC’s management that began the dispute was sent on the first day of a national lockdown, “when access to justice was very limited”.

By September 2023 AFRINIC had four directors, too few for a quorum, and no chief executive.

On 11 September 2023 the Supreme Court held that its lawyers could not rely on a 2021 board resolution to appear for it. The next day, on our application in SC/COM/MOT/000156/2023, the Court found AFRINIC’s objections unsubstantiated and the orders we sought “fully justified, reasonable, and fair”. It appointed the Official Receiver to preserve AFRINIC’s assets and the value of its business and to see that elections are held under its constitution, and it restrained AFRINIC from relocating, merging, restructuring or submitting to a takeover.

An appeal against the receivership was brought in AFRINIC’s name by a former director and by lawyers with no mandate.

On 15 October 2024, in 2024 SCJ 473, the Court of Civil Appeal upheld our objections that it had been brought without authority, set it aside and restored the receivership order. On 25 November 2024, on our motion in SC/COM/MOT/000859/2024, the Supreme Court ordered AFRINIC to conduct its election by the end of June 2025 and recorded the Official Receiver’s undertakings, among them that members admitted without his consent since 19 September 2023 would have no vote. At that hearing the Official Receiver told the Court that, despite his instruction to AFRINIC’s staff, “seven IP addresses have been issued without my permission”.

On 24 May 2021 we petitioned the Court, in SC/COM/PET/000275/2021, to have AFRINIC’s register of members rectified to include us.

On 4 April 2025 the Supreme Court granted an order on that petition. Then AFRINIC itself applied to the Court, in SC/COM/MOT/000399/2025, and on 11 June 2025 the Court varied the order: AFRINIC’s register of members is to be rectified “to add details of Cloud Innovation Ltd as per the criteria set out at Section 91 of the Companies Act as its member in the category of Member therein”. AFRINIC’s Receiver signed a written undertaking to rectify AFRINIC’s records within 15 days, and the Court recorded it.

On 19 June 2025 the Court ruled on an application that ICANN had brought against AFRINIC’s Receiver, SC/COM/MOT/000442/2025.

We were not a party, and the Court found that ICANN had no standing to bring it. It ordered a communiqué correcting one thing: our earlier listing as a “Registered Member”, the category AFRINIC’s bylaws keep for directors, was a “wrong classification”, and we accept that it was. The ruling contains no order cancelling the order of 11 June 2025, which directs that we be entered as a member. A correction of category cannot erase an express order to record a member.

On 14 May 2026, without notice to us, AFRINIC’s Receiver obtained an interim order in SC/COM/WRT/000338/2026 against Cloud Innovation over a press release published by LARUS, a separate company.

The order restrains statements that falsely attribute to the Supreme Court any approval of the leasing or commercialisation of AFRINIC-allocated IP resources. No one made that claim: a lawful business needs no court approval, and no one ever said it did. We learned of the order from AFRINIC’s communiqué, not from formal service. It is an interim order, not a final judgment: it does not decide whether IPv4 leasing is lawful, who owns IP addresses, our place in AFRINIC’s register of members or any LARUS business model.

The 15 days passed without rectification.

So we had the judgment executed. After our praecipe of 2 October 2026 the Supreme Court drew up its order as a rule, dated 9 October 2026 and witnessed by the Chief Justice: AFRINIC’s register of members is to be rectified to add us as its member, and the Registrar of Companies is to make the proper entries within 14 days. The Registrar’s record of AFRINIC, issued on 28 October 2026, lists us as a member from 9 October 2026. The Receiver’s answer, on 29 October, was a legal notice asking the Registrar to remove our entry. Yet AFRINIC’s own communiqué of 31 October 2026 says the rule “serves to certify the outcomes” of the Court’s orders. An officer of the Court who disagrees with an order goes back to the Court.

The dispute is not over, and it is in the Court that it will be decided.

AFRINIC and its Receiver have applied, in SC/COM/MOT/000757/2025, to end the receivership, discharge the Receiver and have the board appointments of September 2025 declared valid; we oppose that application, because the election departed from AFRINIC’s constitution and from the Court’s orders. In July 2025 we petitioned the Court to wind AFRINIC up under its supervision, with its registry services carried on without interruption. And, as our communiqué of 3 November 2026 sets out, we will bring the Receiver’s conduct before the Court that appointed him.