[Community-Discuss] History Lesson -- Looting AFRINIC -- The Beginning

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

It's amazing what one can find just by trawling though the old mailing
list archives.

Here is an oldie but a goodie -- a posting to the RPD list dated January 10,
2013, announcing a new policy proposal... a proposal to allow IP address
resources to be transferred OUT of the AFRINIC region.  (Gee! Now doesn't
THAT sound familiar?)

This new proposal was announced to the list on behalf of AFRINIC by our
dear old friend Ernest Byaruhanga.  But Ernest was just intorducing the
proposal.  The proposal itself was authored by Mr. Chad Abizeid as a
representative of his company, LogicWeb Inc. (New York, USA):

    https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2013/002662.html

As you can all see, the proposal argues that "it stands to reason that no
IPv4 address space should be 'locked up' within the RIR service region".
(It would appear that Mr. Abizeid had no special concerns about either
IPv6 addresses or AS numbers being "locked up" in the AFRINIC region.
His only concern appears to have been the stuff that could be quickly
turned into instant cash.)

As some of you may be aware, Mr. Abizeid's company is currently one of
three that are locked in litigation, WHICH THEY INITIATED, against 
AFRINIC, most probably because the AFRINIC-issued IPv4 block 196.52.0.0/14 
which was previously registered to Mr. Abizeid's company was reclaimed
into the free pool some time ago by AFRINIC, presumably due to what I
believe were some well-placed concerns on the part of AFRINIC about the
exact provenance of this block and its apparent connections to Ernest
and to "The Great AFRINIC Heist".

During my own exhaustive investigation of "The Great AFRINIC Heist" I
found what I believe/believed to be clear and compelling historical
evidence indicating that the 196.52.0.0/14 block was originally registered
to a fictitious and non-existant business entity whose name was given only
as "ITC", where that fake and non-existant company was itself apparently
cooked up out of whole cloth, and then used frequently and repeatedly to
cover up ongoing looting of the free pool, most probably by our dear
Mr. Ernest Byaruhanga.

    https://pastebin.com/raw/726hvviB

I just wanted everyone to be aware of the history here.  Going all of the
way back to 2013 it appears clear that certain non-Africans have been
eager to get their hands on these valuable "natural resources" of Africa,
using ANY MEANS NECESSARY, and that once having obtained these 21st century
blood diamonds, they were very much in a hurry to move them out of Africa
and get them to market as quickly as possible.

Now here we are, here, eight years later, in 2021.  Has anything changed?


Regards,
rfg


P.S.  Note that according to the historical records (see above) the nicely
valuable 196.52.0.0/14 block had only been transfered from "ITC" to Mr.
Abizeid's company, LogicWeb, on October 5, 2012.  Then, just slightly over
two months later, Mr. Abizeid was already putting forth a proposal to allow
him to quickly and efficiently monetize that asset, outside of the AFRINIC
region.

Having lived through four years of Donald Trump's America, I suppose that
I should be accustomed to this level of naked greed by now, but I still
do find it rather astonishing.