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Exclusive: Mauritius’ Supreme Court lifts freeze on Afrinic accounts

By Yara Rizk

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Posted on October 20, 2021 15:17

 © View of Port Louis, capital of Mauritius. Peter Kuchar/Wikimedia Commons
View of Port Louis, capital of Mauritius. Peter Kuchar/Wikimedia Commons

The Supreme Court of Mauritius has unfrozen the bank accounts of IP address block distributor Afrinic, four months after it imposed sanctions.

In a commercial dispute that has escalated into a bitter legal battle between Afrinic, a wholesale distributor of IP address blocks for internet access on the continent, and Cloud Innovation – a company that claims to be based in Hong Kong but is registered in Seychelles and specialises in IP address management – Mauritius’ High Court has declared the freezing order “null and void”, in the words of Afrinic’s CEO.

“The Court, after considering our application and the case brought by Cloud Innovation Ltd, declared the order null and void. Afrinic has therefore won this case against Cloud Innovation Ltd,” CEO Eddy Kayihura said in a message.

The reasons for the dispute

In 2013, Afrinic had allocated approximately one million IP addresses to the company Cloud Innovation. By 2016, this number had increased to 6.2 million. This volume was deemed too large and had caught the attention of the

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