Summary

  • On 13 October 2025, AFRINIC’s Board and Receiver announced a Legal Committee chaired by Ben Roberts, mandated to take stock of all ongoing litigation and optimise legal resources.
  • The same communiqué said the committee was reviewing information about alleged fraudulent Power of Attorney or “Power to Vote” documents from the aborted June 2025 election and promised preliminary and comprehensive updates.
  • AFRINIC’s current committee register names Benjamin Mark Roberts, Kaleem Ahmed Usmani, Dewole David Ajao and Fiona Makokha Asonga, but its charter field reads “N/A”.
  • AFRINIC does publish a court docket with entries numbered through 95. The fixed packet does not identify it as the committee’s work or connect cases to counsel, spend, authority, priorities, recusals or committee decisions.
  • Audited accounts and a USD 1,000 hourly-rate issue reported by NRS make resource oversight consequential, but neither the accounts nor the rate proves illegality or replaces the missing committee record.

The public surface stops at the committee’s name

AFRINIC does not hide the existence of its Legal Committee. Its Board Committees page gives it a chair and three members: Benjamin Mark Roberts, Dr Kaleem Ahmed Usmani, Dewole David Ajao and Dr Fiona Makokha Asonga. The same table provides links or displayed terms for other committees. For the Legal Committee, the “Terms of Reference / Charter” cell says “N/A”.

That small field matters because the committee’s announced assignment was unusually broad. In a joint statement on 13 October 2025, the Board and Receiver said the new body would take stock of every ongoing legal case involving AFRINIC, optimise legal resources and maintain what they called an appropriate and coherent strategy. It was also to review information about the alleged use of fraudulent powers of attorney or “Power to Vote” documents during the aborted June 2025 election.

AFRINIC preserved the allegation as an allegation. So must this reporting. The fixed 19-source packet contains no finding that any document was fraudulent and names no person responsible for one. What it does contain is an institutional promise: members would receive an update when preliminary investigations were complete, followed by a comprehensive update after the committee reviewed all litigation and related legal matters.

By 11 August 2026, the public committee register still offered no charter through which a reader could test the scope, powers, reporting line, quorum, confidentiality rules or deliverables behind that promise.

A long docket is not the same as a decision ledger

The strongest counter-evidence must be stated plainly. AFRINIC maintains a public Court Cases page, last modified on 15 June 2026. It is not a token list. Its entries run through number 95, although number 92 appears twice, and it includes both completed and ongoing proceedings. It also continues to list the application for the Receiver’s discharge as ongoing.

It would therefore be wrong to report that AFRINIC publishes no litigation list. The sharper question is what the list allows members to reproduce.

The page supplies case names, numbers, descriptions, statuses and occasional links to orders. It does not identify itself as the Legal Committee’s promised stocktake. It does not connect each matter to the lawyer instructed, the person who issued that instruction, the approved budget, invoices, payments, strategic objective, next decision, conflict analysis or outcome obtained for the money spent. It contains no committee recommendation and no Board response to one.

A docket records proceedings. A resource ledger records choices. The October mandate covered both: “all ongoing legal cases” and the optimisation of legal resources. Only the first surface is visible in the fixed packet.

AFRINIC’s own bylaws make the missing terms relevant

Article 15.3 of AFRINIC’s bylaws gives directors power to appoint committees “for such reasons and with such terms of reference” as they consider necessary or desirable. That language does not say every term must be public. Nor does it decide whether this Board validly exercised the power. It does, however, show that terms of reference are part of the constitutional design for committee power, not optional editorial decoration.

Article 15.5 separately requires a director with a potential or actual conflict on a Board matter to disclose it and recuse from voting. The remaining directors may also exclude that director from the discussion. The fixed packet contains no Legal Committee-specific conflict or recusal protocol, declaration or meeting record. That absence is not evidence that a conflict existed. It means a reader cannot verify how conflicts would be identified and handled in a committee directing legal strategy about a deeply contested institution.

AFRINIC’s Board Documents page does not close the gap. In the frozen capture, it lists four documents dated between 2019 and 2020: a directors’ declaration of interests, an appointment-and-removal procedure, a Board NDA and an AGMM quorum document. It lists no Legal Committee charter, appointment resolution, minutes, vote record or report.

Records may exist internally or elsewhere. The finding is narrower and more serious than speculation: the public packet through which AFRINIC asks members to trust the committee does not provide them.

Financial audit cannot audit the committee’s mandate

AFRINIC has now published audited financial statements for 2022 and 2023. Direct visual inspection of the scanned reports shows that Forvis Mazars gave an unmodified opinion in each year. In both reports, however, the auditors drew attention to Note 22, which described uncertainty around litigation capable of materially affecting AFRINIC’s financial position. The opinions were not modified because of that emphasis.

Those reports are useful evidence. They also have a limit. Note 22 says management assessed cases with legal advisers and would continue monitoring developments. It does not say how the Legal Committee later prioritised cases, selected or retained counsel, allocated budgets, evaluated results or handled an election-document investigation. Financial reporting and committee accountability are different control layers.

That distinction becomes harder to ignore because money is material. AFRINIC itself said in March 2026 that litigation had cost the organisation millions of dollars. NRS, drawing on AFRINIC disclosures, reports USD 3,289,408 in legal expenditure from 2022 through 2025 and USD 2,148,059 paid to C&A Law in 2022 and 2023. NRS also says a disclosed C&A engagement letter stated an hourly rate of USD 1,000, excluding VAT and disbursements.

Those are attributed claims, not a verdict. NRS expressly says a combined USD 2,000 hourly rate is not proved. A USD 1,000 stated rate does not by itself prove overbilling, unlawful payment or misconduct. It does make the committee’s promised task measurable: which cases justified which work, who approved it, what records support it and what result was obtained?

An audit opinion is not an answer to those questions. It says whether the financial statements are fairly presented under the applicable reporting framework. It does not publish committee authority, invoices, time entries, procurement decisions, recusals or case-by-case value.

The election-document promise remains non-reproducible

The second half of the committee’s mandate involved evidence rather than invoices. AFRINIC said information about alleged fraudulent PoA or “Power to Vote” documents was under review, that the documents were reportedly with relevant investigatory authorities in Mauritius and that members would be updated after preliminary investigations.

The fixed packet does not name the authority, identify a referral date, define the documents transferred, describe evidence preservation, state whether a preliminary investigation ended or publish the promised committee update. This does not mean no referral occurred or no investigation continues. Active investigations can require confidentiality, and personal information can require protection.

But confidentiality can be documented without exposing evidence. AFRINIC could identify the legal basis for the referral, the receiving institution, the date and category of material transferred, the preservation protocol, milestone status and reasons for any necessary redaction. It could state whether the Legal Committee received findings, whether it referred anything onward and what remains pending.

Without even that procedural record, “investigation” functions as an assurance the public cannot test.

The downside sits with members and operators

Heng Lu’s doctrine asks who controls the decision and who absorbs the consequence. Here, the committee was placed between a sprawling litigation docket and the flow of instructions, money and information. The Board formally manages the company. The Receiver remained involved pending formal discharge. Courts adjudicate cases and investigators exercise their own statutory powers. Members and network operators, meanwhile, finance the registry and depend on its continuity.

That distribution matters. A committee can be advisory and still control the first classification of cases, the recommendation to continue or settle, the choice of what reaches the Board and the timing and content of what members are told. The people carrying the operational and economic downside are not necessarily the people choosing the legal portfolio.

LARUS’s warning that uncertain RIR governance can reach infrastructure is relevant for that reason. It is not proof that any committee member caused operational harm. It explains why authority and decision records should be proportionate to the consequence of the gate being controlled.

AFRINIC presents its Board as restored, its collaboration with the Receiver as orderly and its litigation as defence of the registry and the region. Those are AFRINIC’s institutional claims. In March it also said the Receiver’s discharge remained pending and judgment was awaited. The committee record should not depend on accepting either side’s rhetoric. It should allow the underlying choices to be checked.

What an auditable Legal Committee would publish

A reproducible public file would begin with the missing charter and the dated appointment resolution. It would state membership terms, delegated powers, quorum, reporting lines, confidentiality rules and the boundary between committee advice, Board decision, Receiver authority, counsel independence and court control.

It would then connect the existing court docket to a case-by-case resource ledger: counsel and fee basis, instruction date and issuer, budget, invoices and payments, authority relied on, strategic objective, status, outcome, next decision and recorded conflicts or recusals. Privileged material could be redacted with a reason rather than made invisible.

For the election-document review, it would publish a preservation and referral protocol, milestone dates, the scope of any external investigation and privacy-safe interim and final reports. Minutes could record dates, attendance, decisions and dissents without exposing legal advice. The Board could publish its response to each recommendation.

Brian Longwe called for an independent forensic audit when the committee was announced, arguing that an ordinary audit could not answer the concerns he raised. That remains his position, not proof of wrongdoing. But the control principle is sound: the institution that promises investigation and resource optimisation must expose evidence suited to those promises.

The bounded conclusion is not that the Legal Committee is fictitious, that its members acted improperly, that the stated legal rate was illegal or that any election document was fraudulent. AFRINIC names a real committee and publishes a real docket. The conclusion is that the fixed public record stops before the committee’s work becomes reproducible. Names demonstrate composition. A docket demonstrates litigation. Neither demonstrates how power, money and evidence were turned into accountable decisions.

Readers seeking the wider history of the AFRINIC–Lu Heng dispute can consult BTW’s separate research below. It is further reading only; this briefing is a news account of the Legal Committee’s mandate and public record.

Sources