Summary

  • Cloud Innovation has published the court documents in its dispute with those who control AFRINIC as searchable text: eleven orders, rulings and undertakings of the Supreme Court of Mauritius, 26 pages, each beside its original. They are on the company’s public record.
  • The order of 11 June 2025, made on AFRINIC’s own application, directs “the rectification of the register of members of the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) Ltd 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 own communiqué of 31 October 2026 says the Supreme Court rule of 9 October 2026 “serves to certify the outcomes” of that order and of the order of 4 April 2025. The same communiqué reports a legal notice demanding that the Registrar of Companies remove Cloud Innovation’s name, with copies to the Prime Minister.

Scans that no machine could read

A court order that exists only as a picture can be seen and cannot be searched. A search engine does not index it. An AI assistant asked what the Supreme Court of Mauritius decided cannot open it, so it answers from whatever summary it finds first. For five years the public account of these orders came from summaries.

Since 13 November each document on Cloud Innovation’s public record carries its text on the page, described there as “Transcribed word for word from the original, so that it can be read aloud, searched and quoted”, with the scan beside it and the file’s SHA-256 hash. The set runs from the interim injunction of 13 July 2021 to the rule of 9 October 2026.

“For five years people have argued about what the Supreme Court of Mauritius decided, working from summaries written by one side or the other, ours included,” a spokesperson for Cloud Innovation said. “The orders are short. Now anyone can read them. We ask only that they do.”

So this report does that. It quotes four documents, and one that AFRINIC prefers.

11 June 2025: the order

The order is one page. Its heading names the applicant: “AFRICAN NETWORK INFORMATION CENTRE (AfriNIC) (In Receivership)”. Cloud Innovation is the respondent. AFRINIC asked for this order.

The judge varies an order granted on 4 April 2025 on Cloud Innovation’s petition of 2021, “such that the Order shall now read as follows”:

“Ordering and directing the rectification of the register of members of the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) Ltd 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”.

A second paragraph directs the Registrar of Companies “to cause the proper entries to be made in the company records including the register of members”, within 14 days of the rectification. A third records an undertaking.

10 June 2025: the undertaking

The undertaking is on the page before the order. It is a letter to the judge, dated the day before, and its first paragraph reads: “I, the hereundersigned, am the Receiver of the Applicant.”

Its fifth paragraph is the promise: “the Applicant hereby undertakes to rectify its records within 15 days from the date of any Order which this Honourable Court may issue.”

The order was issued the next day and records that undertaking “to rectify its records within 15 days from the date of the present Order”. Cloud Innovation’s public record states what followed: the 15 days passed, the records were not rectified, and in October 2026 the company had the judgment executed.

9 October 2026: the rule, in AFRINIC’s own description

The rule of 9 October 2026 is issued in the name of the Supreme Court and stamped “CERTIFIED A TRUE COPY”. Under the words “IT IS ORDERED THAT”, it sets out the order of 11 June 2025 again: the same rectification, the same Section 91, the same “category of Member”, the same direction to the Registrar of Companies, the same recorded undertaking.

Nobody needs Cloud Innovation’s word for what that rule is. AFRINIC’s communiqué of 31 October 2026, issued “By Order of the Receiver”, describes it: the rule “does not arise from any new proceedings instituted against AFRINIC. Rather, it serves to certify the outcomes of two pre-existing proceedings”, the orders of 4 April 2025 and 11 June 2025.

The same communiqué then reports what the Receiver did about a certified outcome. AFRINIC, “through its Court-appointed Receiver”, served a legal notice on the Registrar of Companies on 29 October 2026, “formally demanding the immediate removal of CIL’s name from the Register of Members”. Copies went, “for information and such action as may be considered appropriate”, to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Information Technology, Communication and Innovation, the Attorney General and the State Law Office.

The communiqué names no court order that directs that removal. An order of the Supreme Court is changed by a court, on appeal, by a stay or by a variation. “An officer of the Court who disagrees with an order goes back to the Court,” the Cloud Innovation spokesperson said. “He does not write to ministers.”

12 September 2023: where the Receiver comes from

The receivership exists because Cloud Innovation asked for it. The ruling and oral judgment of September 2023 are on the record too, and the applicant in them is Cloud Innovation.

The ruling of 11 September 2023 records that it was “undisputed” that AFRINIC then had “only four directors” and no chief executive. The next day the Court gave judgment: it was “satisfied that the prayers sought as per the motion paper made by the applicant, i.e. Cloud Innovation Limited, is fully justified, reasonable, and fair in those circumstances.”

Two orders followed. The first restrains AFRINIC “from relocating and/or subject itself to a takeover or merger, or restructuring or management control in any manner whatsoever”. The second appoints “a receiver in the person of the Official Receiver, for the purpose of holding the ring and ensuring that the status quo of the assets of AfriNIC Ltd is preserved and that the value of the business is maintained”, and “to see to it that the election process as per the constitution of AfriNIC Ltd be carried out so that a proper board could be constituted”.

That is the origin of the receivership, in the Court’s words: a member went to court to keep the registry where it was, protect what it held and get an election held under its constitution. The company’s page “AFRINIC vs Cloud Innovation” sets the decisions out year by year.

The ruling AFRINIC cites instead

AFRINIC’s communiqué leans on another document, an oral ruling of 19 June 2025, and quotes four words from it: “simply a resource member”. That ruling is on the record with the others, and it is worth reading whole.

It was given on an application by ICANN against the Receiver; Cloud Innovation’s public record notes that the company was not a party to it. The ruling begins by noting that “the applicant has no locus standi to enter such an application”. ICANN wanted the Nomination Committee dismantled after voting had begun. The Court called its insistence “inappropriate”, ordered a communiqué to members and otherwise set the application aside. On the way it referred to a “wrong classification” of Cloud Innovation as a “registered member”, the category AFRINIC’s bylaws keep for directors.

What the ruling does not do is vary or cancel the order of 11 June 2025. Cloud Innovation’s statement of 1 November 2026 accepts the correction of the label and draws the line: it “does not cancel our membership of the company”. Nearly sixteen months after that ruling, the Supreme Court’s own rule restated the order of 11 June in the same terms.

What a registry is in these pages

Read together, the documents describe AFRINIC the way the law of Mauritius does: a company, with a register of members, a constitution, directors whose terms expire, and a court that can be asked to put things right. Lu Heng’s Note 78, published the same day as the text of the orders, puts it in one line: “There is only a private company in Mauritius, with eight elected seats on its board, volunteering for the part.”

A company answers to its members and to the court. The orders say so in the Court’s own words, and now anyone can check them.

Sources