Summary

  • AFRINIC's Mauritian registration is the jurisdictional hook: the Companies Act 2001 puts receivership-type applications before the Bankruptcy Division of the Supreme Court and defines "Court" as that Division.
  • Cloud Innovation's motion of 7 March 2023, brought under section 178 of that Act, sought interim orders including appointment of a Receiver in the person of the Official Receiver; the registry's appeal of 28 September 2023 was set aside for want of corporate authority and locus standi, not on the merits.
  • Two further gates, the receiver's permission and the first-instance judge's leave, were argued but deliberately left undecided, so whether the order is final or interlocutory still governs whether a challenge needs leave.
  • The appellate chain ends at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council under section 81 of the Constitution, with procedure under the Mauritius (Appeals to Privy Council) Order 1968.

The registration that grounds the power

The Registrar of Companies extract lists AFRINIC (file C49338, business registration C06049338) as a "DOMESTIC" private company incorporated on 3 February 2004, with a registered office at 19 Cybercity, 11th Floor, Standard Chartered Tower, Ebene, and its principal place of business in Mauritius; the same record lists a receiver appointed by court order on 12 February 2025 (Registrar of Companies extract).

That administrative record is the foundation for everything that follows. The Companies Act 2001 defines "Court" as the Bankruptcy Division of the Supreme Court and defines "Official Receiver" by reference to the Bankruptcy Act (Companies Act 2001, Mauritius). The authority exercised over the registry is therefore domestic company-law authority applied to a Mauritian company rather than a special jurisdiction over number resources, and the Supreme Court of Mauritius is the court that the statute names.

The order that began the sequence

The Court of Civil Appeal's judgment in 2024 SCJ 473 records that Cloud Innovation's motion of 7 March 2023 was brought before the Bankruptcy Division of the Supreme Court under section 178 of the Companies Act 2001 and sought interim orders, including appointment of a Receiver in the person of the Official Receiver (African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) Ltd v Cloud Innovation Ltd & Anor, 2024 SCJ 473). The Number Resource Organization's statement on the appointment describes the 11 September 2023 ruling as relying on section 178(2)(c) to restrain AFRINIC from relocation, takeover, merger or restructuring and to appoint the Official Receiver to maintain the status quo and preserve business value, with a six-month election timetable running from 12 September 2023 (NRO statement on the appointment of an official receiver for AFRINIC).

AFRINIC's own notice, issued through the Official Receiver, records the Supreme Court's ruling of 15 October 2024 as setting aside the appeal initiated on 28 September 2023 and restoring the 12 September 2023 Commercial Division judgment, including the order appointing the Official Receiver, with a two-month timeframe to organise elections under the registry's constitution (AFRINIC-Announce, Court Update).

The two accounts of the election timetable differ. The judgment records that the Court restored the 12 September 2023 order while substituting a two-month period for completion of the elections, which explains the difference between the institutional statement and the registry's notice without resolving every term of the original order (2024 SCJ 473).

The gates a challenge must pass

The Court of Civil Appeal did not reach the substance of the receivership. It set the appeal aside because the purported appellant's director, Mr Eshun, lacked the corporate authority to lodge it and the lawyers lacked locus standi, so no valid appeal existed (2024 SCJ 473). Two further objections were argued and expressly left undecided: whether the Official Receiver's permission was required, and whether leave of the first-instance judge was needed (2024 SCJ 473).

That leaves a statutory frame any future challenge must work through. The Court of Civil Appeal Act 1963 gives the Court of Civil Appeal unlimited jurisdiction to hear appeals in civil matters from final decisions of the Supreme Court, and provides that no appeal lies except by leave from an order as to costs only, a consent order, or an interlocutory judgment or order; leave applications run 14 days to the Supreme Court ex parte and 7 days to the Court of Civil Appeal if leave is refused (Court of Civil Appeal Act 1963, Mauritius). Whether the receivership order is final or interlocutory for that purpose was not resolved in the judgment. Three gates are therefore visible, the corporate identity of the appellant, the receiver's permission and the judge's leave, and only the first was decided.

Where the chain ends

The Supreme Court's own description of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council states that it is Mauritius's highest court of appeal; that appeals lie as of right or with leave as set out in section 81 of the Constitution and section 70A of the Courts Act; that the Judicial Committee may grant special leave under section 81(5); and that procedure is governed by the Mauritius (Appeals to Privy Council) Order 1968 (Supreme Court of Mauritius: Judicial Committee of the Privy Council). The Judicial Committee's practice direction confirms that Mauritius is among the independent republics in the Commonwealth from which an appeal lies to the Committee, citing section 81 of the Schedule to the Mauritius Independence Order 1968, S.I. 1968 No. 294 and S.I. 1992 No. 1716 (JCPC non-portal practice direction). The 1968 Order supplies the machinery: applications for leave by motion or petition within 21 days of the decision, security requirements and enforcement of Privy Council orders (Mauritius (Appeals to Privy Council) Order 1968).

For AFRINIC the practical consequence is that the terminal forum for a challenge to a receivership order sits above the Court of Civil Appeal, but only if the challenger clears the leave question that the Court of Civil Appeal itself left open.

The court's continuing supervision

The Bankruptcy Division has remained involved well beyond the appointment. ICANN announced on 20 June 2025 that it had applied to the Supreme Court (Bankruptcy Division) and obtained rulings concerning the Court-Appointed Receiver of AFRINIC, including an order that the Receiver issue a communique about the erroneous registration of Cloud Innovation Ltd as a member and about the NomCom setup, while the court found that ICANN had no locus standi (ICANN announcement, 20 June 2025). The receiver answers to the Division, and third parties seeking changes in registry records and election machinery have had to ask the court rather than the board.

The most recent public step in that supervision comes from the registry's own parties. A joint communique from the AFRINIC Board of Directors and the Receiver states that on 8 October 2025 the Receiver filed an Application for Termination of Receivership before the Supreme Court (Bankruptcy Division) of Mauritius to initiate his formal release, that a decision is awaited, and that a Board of Directors is now in place following elections (AFRINIC-Announce, communique from the Board of Directors and the Receiver).

What the record does not settle

Five points remain open on the documents reviewed here. The Registrar's extract cites "SECTION 278 (2) OF COMPANIES ACT" where the judgment and the NRO statement cite section 178, so the provision numbering needs confirmation against the Act itself. The full verbatim text of section 178 was not confirmed from these documents. The Court left undecided whether receiver permission and first-instance leave were required. It did not classify the order as final or interlocutory. And the outcome of the 8 October 2025 termination application is not stated as decided.