Summary

  • The Court of Civil Appeal of the Supreme Court of Mauritius, in African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) Ltd v Cloud Innovation Ltd & Anor, 2024 SCJ 473 delivered on 15 October 2024, set aside AFRINIC's appeal, restored the Commercial Division's order of 12 September 2023, and substituted a two-month deadline for the Official Receiver to complete the Board-reconstitution election process.
  • The instrument that restored the receiver's control over AFRINIC was executed in one respect — directors elected in September 2025 resumed duty — but the receiver's application for discharge has been heard with judgment awaited as of AFRINIC's 12 March 2026 member update.
  • AFRINIC's contractual instrument against Cloud Innovation, the 8 July 2021 board resolution terminating the Registration Service Agreement, remains a contested characterisation rather than an established final outcome.
  • An 11 June 2025 court order is read by Larus as rectifying AFRINIC's register of members to add Cloud Innovation as a member, and read by AFRINIC as creating no such structure — a direct conflict between two parties' accounts of the same instrument.
  • A 14 May 2026 interim order, reported by AFRINIC on 15 May 2026, directed Cloud Innovation to take down statements suggesting the court had sanctioned leasing of AFRINIC-allocated IP resources; Cloud Innovation says it was not formally served and that the order does not decide the lawfulness of IPv4 leasing.

On 15 October 2024, the Court of Civil Appeal of the Supreme Court of Mauritius handed down its judgment in the appeal AFRINIC had lodged against Cloud Innovation. The operative paragraphs are unusually explicit about what the court did and did not decide. The verbatim passage, as reported consistently across two independent retrievals of the judgment hosted by Wilberforce Chambers, reads:

"For all the above reasons, we uphold the respondent's preliminary objections to the effect that Mr Eshun lacked the necessary power or authority to cause the present appeal to be lodged and to bind the appellant with any surety or recognisance so that there is no valid appeal before the Court of Civil Appeal. We also uphold the respondent's objection that Messrs Moollan and Mardemootoo had no locus standi to lodge and appear in the present appeal in the name of the appellant. In light of our above decision, we find it unnecessary to deal with the other objections of the respondent, that is whether permission of the official receiver and leave of the first instance Judge was required before lodging the appeal. We, accordingly, set aside the appeal but make no order as to costs having regard to the particular circumstances of the present case. We restore the Order made by the learned Judge of the Commercial Division of the Supreme Court in an oral judgment delivered on 12 September 2023. The reconstitution of the appellant's Board of directors is certainly a matter of utmost urgency. With regard to the Order directing the receiver in the person of the Official Receiver to carry out the election of the Board as per the appellant's constitution and to complete the whole process within a delay of six months as from 12 September 2023, we substitute therefor an order directing the Official Receiver to complete the whole process within a period of two (2) months as from the date of this judgment." (2024 SCJ 473 judgment PDF)

Three things follow from those words, and each matters for the question this article tracks: which instrument actually grants AFRINIC authority over the resources it has allocated, and how current that authority is.

First, the appeal was dismissed on preliminary objections. Former director Benjamin Eshun's term had expired by effluxion of time on 18 September 2023, and the court reasoned that even had he remained in office he could not have acted alone, because AFRINIC's bylaws require a quorum of not less than five directors (article 19.6(1)) and there was no board resolution (2024 SCJ 473 judgment PDF). Messrs Moollan and Mardemootoo were held to have no standing to appear in AFRINIC's name. The court expressly declined to decide whether the Official Receiver's permission and the first-instance judge's leave were required to lodge the appeal.

Second, the Commercial Division's oral-judgment order of 12 September 2023 — appointing the Official Receiver and directing an election of the Board — was restored, not merely allowed to stand. The court described the reconstitution of AFRINIC's board as "a matter of utmost urgency" and shortened the deadline from six months to two months from the date of judgment (2024 SCJ 473 judgment PDF).

Third, the judgment resolved one control track and left the others untouched. It did not decide the ownership of the disputed IPv4 resources, the lawfulness of IPv4 leasing, or the validity of the Registration Service Agreement termination. It re-established the machinery of governance — a receiver-run election — and set a clock.

The instrument stack

Every live claim of authority over the disputed IPv4 resources now rests on one of several instruments, and each occupies a different status in the record.

The contractual instrument: the RSA termination. AFRINIC asserts that its authority over member allocations derives from the Registration Service Agreement and the Consolidated Policy Manual, and that on 8 July 2021 its board unanimously terminated Cloud Innovation's RSA with a 90-day grace period before deregistering the allocated addresses. AFRINIC contends that leasing or out-of-region use of allocated IPv4 is not permitted absent an express policy, a position recorded in its own public litigation communications (AFRINIC communiqué, 9 May 2026). Cloud Innovation disputes the characterisation of breach, and the termination's later legal effect is contested across the court, register and communiqué instruments. No instrument in the public record establishes that the termination has been judicially upheld.

The membership-register instrument: the 11 June 2025 order. Larus and Lu Heng's own account asserts that on 11 June 2025, in case SC/COM/MOT/000399/2025, the Supreme Court of Mauritius directed rectification of AFRINIC's register of members to add Cloud Innovation Ltd as a member, directed the Registrar of Companies to update records, and recorded the Receiver's written undertaking to rectify within 15 days (Larus account, Lu Heng's advocacy piece). AFRINIC's own communiqué of 9 May 2026 states the opposite: the order "did not establish, approve, recognise, or create any such 'Court-Ordered Shareholder-Position Continuity Structure'", and disputes whether the order concerns the statutory register of members under section 91 of the Companies Act 2001 at all (AFRINIC communiqué, 9 May 2026). The order text itself has not been publicly available in unredacted form in the sources inspected for this article. Two named parties therefore record opposite readings of the same instrument, and the deciding body's own recorded words remain the missing link.

The communications instrument: the 14 May 2026 interim order. According to AFRINIC's communiqué of 15 May 2026, the Supreme Court issued an interim order against Cloud Innovation concerning statements disseminated through its subsidiary Larus Ltd suggesting the court had sanctioned or authorised leasing of AFRINIC-allocated IP resources, with a take-down deadline of 28 May 2026; the same day the court granted an order formally allowing ICANN to intervene as a party in the winding-up petition (AFRINIC communiqué, 15 May 2026). Cloud Innovation told The Register it had not been formally served with the alleged interim order, and stated: "It is not a final judgment. It does not decide whether IPv4 leasing is lawful. It does not decide IP ownership" (The Register, 27 May 2026). The underlying order PDFs are redacted.

The corporate-solvency instrument: the winding-up petition. AFRINIC's member update of 12 March 2026 records that a winding-up petition (SC/COM/PET/000508/2025) was filed in July 2025, that ICANN applied to intervene and that intervention has been ordered, and that the receiver's application for discharge has been heard with judgment awaited (AFRINIC member update, 12 March 2026). ICANN had earlier obtained a ruling requiring the receiver to issue a communiqué to members in support of fair board elections (ICANN announcement, 20 June 2025), and its involvement in the receivership extends back to the original receiver appointment it sought (ICANN update on the receiver appointment; NRO letter on the Official Receiver).

What has actually been executed

Across the whole stack, exactly one control track shows an instrument that was ordered, completed and recorded: the board reconstitution. Directors elected in September 2025 resumed duty per AFRINIC's own update (AFRINIC member update) — although that resumption post-dates the substituted two-month window from 15 October 2024, and neither the expiry of that window nor any extension is established in the inspected record. The receiver's discharge remains pending. The RSA termination remains contested. The register rectification remains disputed between the parties. The interim order remains disputed as to service and scope.

The conclusion the record supports is narrow but consequential: AFRINIC's authority over the disputed IPv4 resources is currently provisional and instrument-specific. It is strongest where the court has spoken — the restored receivership order and the completed board election — and weakest where it rests on instruments whose text is redacted, whose service is denied, or whose effect a sitting court has not yet adjudicated. Readers should treat each claim on the record of its own instrument, and treat any summary claim that "the court approved" one side's overall position as unsupported by the instruments inspected here.

What remains unknown

Several questions cannot be answered from public sources as of the latest dated instrument (the 15 May 2026 communiqué): whether the 28 May 2026 take-down deadline was met, extended or adjudicated; whether Cloud Innovation was formally served; the outcome of the receiver's discharge application; the operative words of the 11 June 2025 and 14 May 2026 orders; and the current entry status of Cloud Innovation on the section 91 register. This article does not resolve those questions; it establishes that they remain open in the public record.