[afnog] [Community-Discuss] Updates on the misappropriation of IPv4 resources

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <9A35CE76-E056-4547-B7FD-52696C5C7604 at darwincosta.com>, 
"dc at darwincosta.com" <dc at darwincosta.com> wrote:

>@Mr. Ronald I was reading your email and findings over and over again yesterday
>night and this morning... Thank you very much for bringing all of this into
>our attention and YES - we "will" or "have"
>to do whatever it's necessary to revert this situation and to ensure
>that AFRINIC returns to AFRINIC as it should be.

Thank you for yor support.

I suppose that it should be apparent to all that I am upset and angry
about many of the things that have gone on within the AFRINIC region.
But the various IP block thefts themselves are, to my way of thinking,
the least of it all.

Quite some time ago now, Eddy announced to everyone that AFRINIC was
going to be performing an exhaustive audit of all AFRINIC WHOIS changes,
back to the beginning of time, with the intent obviously being to ferret
out any -more- instances of questionable IPv4 allocations, above and
beyond those that I and journalist Jan Vermeulen already brought to
light last year (2019).  Eddy even said that technical personnel and
representatives of one of the more senior RIRs (APNIC) were being
brought in to help with this effort.

That was many MANY months ago now.  (Also, as I'm sure many of you know,
Ernest's malfeasance has been known about by the AFRINIC Board and
management for over an entire calendar year now.)

So this raises the obvious question:  Why didn't Eddy and the Board
already know about the apparent connections bewteen the AFRINIC IPv4
allocations held by Mr. Abizeid and Mr. Mehta long long before my
posting the other day about those?  And if they did know, then why did
they elect to give both Mr. Abizeid and Mr. Mehta a pass, allowing
them both to *keep* the sizable AFRINIC IPv4 allocations that appear
to have been provided to them... presumably in fundamentally crooked
transactions... by the now disgraced and long ago terminated ex-employee
Ernest Byaruhanga?

It has to be one or the other.  There is no third possibility.

Either Eddy & the Board knew, and elected to do nothing and keep silent,
or else their much heralded "exhaustive audit" of the history of all
AFRINIC allocations was so fundementally flawed and incomplete that
it failed to catch obviously questionable allocations of great swaths
of AFRINIC non-legacy IPv4 address space, totaling well over a million
IPv4 addresses.

I'm not sure which of these two possibilities is worse.  Either the
so-called "audit" was done in a glaringly incompetent manner, or else
Eddy and the Board have been complicit in trying to sweep under the
carpet the questionable nature of the sizable AFRINIC IPv4 allocations
held by -both- Mr. Abizeid -and- Mr. Mehta... neither of whom is either
located in the AFRINIC region, and neither of whom, it appears, is
providing -any- services whatsoever within the AFRINIC region.

I look forward to Eddy and the Board clarifying when they learned about
the apparent connections between the IPv4 holdings of Mr. Abizeid and
Mr. Mehta and the fradulent "ITC" fake corporation that for years served
to hide so many of the thefts of Ernest Byaruhanga.

If Eddy and the Board only learned about those connections from my public
posting of a couple of days ago, then maybe it is time, at long last, for
them to grant me access to the historical AFRINIC WHOIS information that
I have been repeatedly requesting for more than a year now, so that I can
perform a proper sort of audit and analysis of those records.

On the other hand, if they are none too pleased with me having been able
to find and expose the many AFRINIC WHOIS anomalies that I have already
managed to find and expose... even with very limited WHOIS access... then
I guess they will continue to want to keep me as far away as possible
from any historical WHOIS information, above and beyond what all ordinary
man-on-the-street netizens are privy to.


Regards,
rfg


P.S.  I am more than a little inclined to believe that Eddy and the
AFRINIC Board do want to, and have wanted to just sweep these matters
under the carpet, as much as possible.  My belief is based on the
fact that Eddy & The Board have quite clearly made a decision...
privately and without even having the courtesy of informing the
AFRINIC membership... to allow the crooks, Mr. Uerlings & Mr. Cohen,
to keep any and all of the legacy IPv4 address blocks that they had
successfully stolen, and for which no rightful owner has showed up to
protest.

The result has been an inconsistant hodge-podge with things only
partially set right.  The City of Cape Town, the commercial South
African firm Columbus Stainless, the South African state-owned oil
company, Sasol, and others have all managed to get their legacy
IPv4 blocks back from the clutches of the fraudsters, Mr. Cohen and
Mr. Uerlings, simply by showing up to assert their rightful claims.

Other legitimate legacy block holders have, unfortunately, been either
too lazy, too confused, or too timid to even assert their rights,
and this has allowed Eddy and the Board to simply ignore those rights
as a matter of expediency.  This is not a shining example of either
honor or courage on their part.  It is rather a capitulation to criminals,
and an abdication of their responsibilities to act in the best interests
of the AFRINIC members and community.

Giving in to corruption only leads to even more corruption.  And frankly,
I remain surprised that this simple fact is not by now better understood
and appreciated through the African continent.

Eddy and the Board can and should stop their silent charade, tell the
members what they have decided to do, or not do, about the various stolen
AFRINIC legacy blocks that to this day remain stolen and in the hands of
messers Uerlings & Cohen, and they should be prepared to defend their
decisions in an open forum.

The global reputation of AFRINIC has already been buffeted by repeated
public scandals in recent years.  Repairing that global reputation cannot
even begin as long as the AFRINIC Board and management are still hiding
their decision making process behind the same closed doors that protected
Ernest Byaruhanga and his criminal machinations from public view for so
many years.