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ICANN and .africa: brazenly corrupt practice and cover-up

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  ICANN and .africa: brazenly corrupt practice and cover-up RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-07-16 11:13 +0300

#8138 — ICANN and .africa: brazenly corrupt practice and cover-up

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/15/icann_dot_africa_review/

Unredacted: ICANN's hidden role in fierce battle over .Africa rights
Damning review was censored – but we've seen the full report

Domain-name overseer ICANN's pivotal role in a controversial fight over 
.africa is today revealed in full for the first time.
An independent review into the .africa saga, which was two years in the 
making, concluded that ICANN had broken its own bylaws: the 
organization had failed to properly investigate claims made by one of 
the two applicants battling for the rights to own the top-level domain.
But before the 63-page final report [PDF] was published last week, 
repeated references to ICANN's own involvement in favor of one of the 
applicants were systematically removed by the organization itself.
The report contains no less than 39 redactions, many pulling out entire 
paragraphs of text. The Register has seen a non-redacted version of the 
report, and we can say that most of those redactions concern the fact 
that ICANN's head of operations, Dai-Trang Nguyen, drafted a letter 
that was then used by ICANN to advance a competing .africa bid.
There were two applications for .africa. The first came from 
DotConnectAfrica (DCA), which originally received support from the 
African Union Commission (AUC), Africa's equivalent of the European 
Commission.
Subsequently, however, the AUC decided it wanted to be in control of 
the .africa internet space, and so rescinded its support for DCA and 
ran its own process to find a company to run the top-level domain. DCA 
refused to participate in that process, and applied through ICANN's 
processes for the rights to the dot-word itself. As a result, it ended 
up in conflict with the company that the AUC eventually chose: South 
Africa's ZACR.
In an effort to push its choice, and eliminate the DCA bid from ICANN's 
process, the AUC then carried out an extensive lobbying campaign, 
including lodging formal objections to the DCA bid. In response to that 
campaign, ICANN rejected DCA's application. And DCA appealed the 
decision.
More than two years later, an independent review of ICANN's rejection 
decision found that ICANN did not properly investigate DCA's claims and 
so had acted unfairly.
However, what the report also revealed – and which ICANN then removed 
before publishing – was that ICANN's staff had assisted the AUC and its 
competing bid.
Questions raised
An early letter to ICANN from the African Union Commission (AUC) in 
support of its own candidate to run dot-africa did not fulfill ICANN's 
criteria, was not in the correct format, and sparked a "clarifying 
question" from the third party that ICANN tasked with checking that the 
bid had the requisite support.
In response, the AUC privately asked ICANN staff for help, and no less 
than ICANN's head of operations obliged, drafting a new letter that, 
unsurprisingly, fulfilled all the necessary criteria.
That ICANN-drafted letter, duly signed by the AUC, was then used as the 
key piece of evidence to show that ZACR had sufficient support for its 
bid, and just a week later ICANN signed a contract with ZACR to run 
.africa.
Essentially, ICANN drafted a letter in support of ZACR, gave it to the 
AUC, and the AUC submitted the letter back to ICANN as evidence that 
ZACR should run dot-africa.
Not exactly Switzerland
This process in which ICANN engineered approval of a particular 
application, and so undermined its own requirement to act "neutrally 
and objectively with integrity and fairness," was repeatedly referenced 
in the independent report.
In one redacted section, ICANN admits it wrote the letter, but argued 
that it "did not violate any policy in drafting a template letter at 
the AUC request." Later on it said that there was "absolutely nothing 
wrong with ICANN staff assisting the AUC."
However, ICANN's failure to act neutrally may put the entire ZACR 
application at risk.
ICANN also redacted mention of a number of other related accusations: 
for example, ICANN allegedly told InterConnect – which was, along with 
other consultants, scrutinizing dot-word applications – to take the 
ICANN-drafted AUC letter as evidence that all African governments fully 
supported ZACR for the dot-africa job.
If true, it is another clear violation of the organization's neutrality.

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