Summary

  • The operative text of AFRINIC's own dated instruments — not their titles — is the most reliable public evidence of where deciding power currently sits: the 24 August 2026 CEO-designate announcement is expressly issued "with the consent of the Receiver," while the 28 August 2026 Appeal Committee constitution contains no such recital.
  • The Receiver's own application for termination of the receivership, filed 8 October 2025 before the Supreme Court of Mauritius (cause SC/COM/MOT/000757/2025), had been heard with judgment awaited as of AFRINIC's 12 March 2026 member update; no discharge order or any post-24 August 2026 court order was located on the public record by 27 September 2026.
  • The 14 May 2026 court instruments — an interim order against Cloud Innovation Ltd and the admission of ICANN as a party to winding-up petition SC/COM/PET/000508/2025 — remain the latest dated court documents touching AFRINIC that this research could locate.

The instrument that currently grants deciding power over AFRINIC is not a board resolution or a policy document. It is the receivership ordered by the Supreme Court of Mauritius, under which Gowtamsingh Dabee was appointed Receiver in February 2025. Everything that follows on the control surface — who may approve an appointment, who may sign off on an allocation, who may be named CEO — is measured against that fact and against the Receiver's own attempt to end it.

That attempt is documented in the Receiver's own words. According to AFRINIC's communiqué of 13 October 2025, distributed through its announce mailing list (https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/announce/2025/002501.html), on 8 October 2025 the Receiver filed an "Application for Termination of Receivership" before the Supreme Court (Bankruptcy Division) of Mauritius, "thereby initiating the process for his formal release. A decision of the Honourable Court is currently awaited." Until formal discharge, the same communiqué records, Mr Dabee agreed to continue supporting AFRINIC following the appointment of directors.

What did each later instrument actually grant? The question matters because titles invite over-reading. A "CEO Designate" announcement sounds like a restoration of ordinary corporate life. Its operative terms say something narrower. The communiqué of 24 August 2026 (https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/announce/2026/002593.html) grants a forward-dated appointment: Mike Silber will assume office as Chief Executive Officer on 1 January 2027. It changes nothing about custodianship on its face. And its authority structure is stated explicitly: the Board acted "with the consent of the Receiver," and the announcement was issued by "the AFRINIC Board of Directors and the Receiver." The recruitment process itself, the communiqué records, was led by a CEO Search Committee "initiated by the Receiver and the Board." A mailing-list copy distributed at 08:14:30 UTC the same day (https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/announce/2026/002593.html) confirms date, formula and effect date.

Four days later the Board issued a different kind of instrument. The 28 August 2026 constitution of the AFRINIC Appeal Committee (https://afrinic.net/constitution-of-the-afrinic-appeal-committee.html) appoints five named members — Silvio Cabral, Sami Salih, Oluwaseun Ojedeji, Nitin Kelawon Sookun and Eddy Lareine — "effective immediately for a term running until 31 December 2026," to hear appeals under the Conflict Resolution provisions of the Policy Development Process. The located text contains no Receiver-consent recital. That is an absence, not a finding: absence of the formula does not prove the Receiver's consent was refused, unnecessary, or even sought. It proves only that the Board chose to publish this instrument without stating that consent, in contrast to the instrument it had published four days earlier. The contrast is itself the evidence: between 24 and 28 August 2026, the Board's own publishing practice marked a boundary between acts it recorded as Receiver-consented and acts it did not.

The court layer beneath both instruments has not moved on the located record. AFRINIC's communiqué of 15 May 2026 (https://afrinic.net/afrinic-communique-15052026.html) records that on 14 May 2026 the Supreme Court issued an Interim Order against Cloud Innovation Ltd over statements published through its subsidiary Larus Ltd, and granted an order allowing ICANN to intervene as a party in the winding-up petition under matter SC/COM/PET/000508/2025. AFRINIC's own court-cases index (https://afrinic.net/court-cases.html) is the organisation's docket-like entry point, and the BTW instrument-chain dossier (https://btw.media/en/afrinic-receivership-instrument-chain) records no court order after that date: the post-24 August items are the Appeal Committee constitution (28 August) and external NRO governance material (1 September, https://afrinic.net/draft-rir-governance-document-rationale-report-and-next-steps.html) plus a notice of a Mauritius public holiday (https://afrinic.net/announcement-of-public-holiday-15-09-2026.html).

AFRINIC's 12 March 2026 member update (https://afrinic.net/afrinic-member-update-organisational-stability-and-ongoing-legal-challenges.html) adds the operational detail: "the receiver's application for discharge has been heard, and judgment is now awaited," and the Receiver was approving IP address allocations and assignments going through the application process, consistent with ICP-2 and prevailing policies. Cloud Innovation Ltd, by the same update, objected to the discharge and called for the appointment of another receiver, while contesting the Receiver's authority over allocations before the courts. ICANN has twice intervened publicly to defend AFRINIC's recognition, as reported by The Register on 27 May 2026 (https://www.theregister.com/networks/2026/05/27/icann-again-intervenes-to-defend-afrinic/5246790).

The bounded conclusion is therefore: as of 27 September 2026, on the public record located for this research, the control surface of AFRINIC remains held by an undischarged Receiver; the only dated Board instruments after 24 August 2026 are the Appeal Committee constitution, published without a consent recital, and external NRO material that does not bear on the receivership; and the discharge judgment remains unpublished. For a member holding internet number resources, the practical question — which acts of the Board still require Receiver consent, and which do not — is answered only instrument by instrument, recital by recital.