Today they call it LARUS leasing. Tomorrow they can call your business illegal.

If your customers use IP addresses through you, AFRINIC’s anti-leasing narrative is not someone else’s problem. It is your network, your customers, your revenue, and your survival.

Your business already depends on customers using addresses through you. By any serious commercial and legal reading, that is leasing or a lease-like right of use: the customer pays, you grant address use, and the service continues while the commercial relationship continues. AFRINIC’s claim in plain English is not anti-one business model. It is anti-Internet.

Join NRS Shield now See why this affects you

Risk 01Your customer IP services are exposed.

Risk 02Your renewals and transfers can be questioned.

Risk 03Your statutory member rights are under attack.

Risk 04You may fight alone when the registry moves.

⚠️ REGISTRY-LAYER RISK IS NOT THEORY • IT IS AN OPERATIONAL FAILURE PATH • ACT BEFORE YOU BECOME THE TEST CASE

The false frame

AFRINIC obtained an order against a claim LARUS did not make.

LARUS did not claim that the Supreme Court of Mauritius approved, endorsed, sanctioned, or authorised its customer products, leasing contracts, monetisation model, or business activity.

The interim order restrains false attribution of judicial approval. It is not a final judgment. It does not decide that IPv4 leasing is unlawful. It does not decide IP ownership. It does not reverse Cloud Innovation’s register/member position.

An injunction against a non-existent claim does not clarify the law. It manufactures a narrative. The real question is whether AFRINIC now wants to treat structured downstream use of Internet number resources as suspect.

Theme image: warning boundary — red sandstone cliffs, Heng Lu landscape photography.

This is your business model

If you provide connectivity, cloud, hosting, telecom, IXP or data-centre services, you already give customers address use.

Do not say “leasing is not my business.” Your business already depends on customers using addresses through you. That makes this inescapable.

This is IP leasing in plain English.

When your customer pays you every month and receives a dynamic IP, static IP, VPS IP, public cloud IP, business /29, data-centre IP add-on, downstream assignment, sub-allocation, peering LAN address, or bundled connectivity address, you are giving that customer an ongoing right to use Internet number resources. Call it assignment, delegation, bundled service, customer IP service or lease. The substance is the same.

If AFRINIC can attack that substance under the word “leasing,” no operator escapes. This is not about one LARUS product. It is about whether AFRINIC is prepared to weaponise its registry chokepoint against the normal way ISPs, cloud providers, hosting companies, telecoms, data centres and IXPs serve customers.

ISP access
Dynamic IPs, static IP add-ons, business broadband, /29s and /28s.

Cloud and VPS
Public IPv4 attached to instances, servers, containers, and managed workloads.

Data centres
Monthly IP add-ons, managed connectivity, customer IP bundles and firewall services.

Telecom operators
Enterprise circuits, MPLS Internet breakout, access networks and customer addressing.

LIRs and downstream ISPs
Assignments, sub-allocations, PA space, delegation and customer networks.

IXPs and interconnection
Peering LANs, participant addresses, route-server operations and shared infrastructure.

Theme image: isolated operator exposed to registry pressure — rocky peninsula, Heng Lu landscape photography.

No addresses, no business

Without downstream address use, the modern Internet stops selling services.

ISPs cannot sell Internet access. Cloud providers cannot sell servers. Hosting companies cannot sell websites. Telecom operators cannot deliver enterprise Internet. Data centres cannot sell managed connectivity. The Internet does not function if every end customer must become a direct RIR-facing resource holder.

AFRINIC must answer the real question.

Is AFRINIC prepared to leverage its registry chokepoint power to threaten, freeze, revoke, delegitimise, or destroy the Internet operations its own members actually run? If it can relabel ordinary customer address use as suspect “leasing” today, it can do the same to your static IP service, VPS IP, cloud public IP, data-centre IP bundle, enterprise circuit, downstream assignment, sub-allocation, renewal, transfer, or NIR access tomorrow.

This is not optional politics. If your revenue depends on customers using IP addresses through you, AFRINIC’s anti-leasing narrative is aimed at the operating logic of your business.

Mandate laundering

A disputed authority must not weaponise its chokepoint.

AFRINIC announced eight persons as elected to its 2025 Board: Abdelaziz Hilali, Emmanuel Adewale Adedokun, Kaleem Ahmed Usmani, Kayemba Laurent Ntumba, Carla Sanderson, Fiona Asonga, Benjamin Mark Roberts and Ajao Adewole David. The Receiver is Mr Gowtamsingh Dabee.

The Receiver organised the election. The purported Board relies on the Receiver’s process. The Receiver then relies on the purported Board’s support. Both act in AFRINIC’s name while NRS asks whether the lawful authority to speak for AFRINIC has been finally validated.

Theme image: critical infrastructure under red alert — skyline and river, Heng Lu landscape photography.

1Disputed election

2Receiver mandate confusion

3Purported Board authority

4Regional lock-in

5Bylaw rights removal

6Anti-leasing rhetoric

Public accountability

These are the named people behind the authority problem.

If communiqués are issued in AFRINIC’s name, members deserve to know who is personally standing behind them. The question is no longer abstract governance. It is whether this Receiver and this purported Board are prepared to use AFRINIC’s registry chokepoint power to threaten the Internet operations of the very members they claim to serve.

RECEIVER

Gowtamsingh Dabee

Receiver

Public professional profile / GD RICHES

PURPORTED BOARD