The African Network Information Centre, better known as AfriNIC, was created to guarantee Africa’s fair share of internet resources. It was supposed to be technical, neutral, and beyond politics. Today it has become the stage for a battle that is tearing at the heart of Mauritius’ institutions. A registry that once quietly managed digital addresses now sits at the center of corruption allegations, constitutional challenges, and political score settling.
At stake is more than the stability of one organization. The paralysis of AfriNIC has frozen the allocation of internet addresses across the continent. The crisis has revealed a judiciary entangled with politics and family ties, an executive accused of bending the constitution, and lawyers who defend both government critics and a company accused of trying to capture Africa’s digital resources.
The question is what comes next. Can Mauritius still claim to be a trusted hub for Africa’s digital future, or has AfriNIC exposed a system where serious investors should think twice in a country where, with enough money, you can buy a judge or perhaps even buy the whole court?
The lawyer of the fallen regime
Few figures in Mauritius embody controversy as fully as Abdool Raouf Gulbul. For more than three decades his name has been synonymous with the courtroom battles that shaped and often tarnished the country’s political landscape. A senior barrister with a reputation for being both brilliant and ruthless, Gulbul has built his career on defending the fallen: ministers chased out of office by scandal, businessmen undone by fraud investigations, financiers whose fortunes evaporated in the glare of public scrutiny.
To supporters he is fearless, a consummate litigator with a razor sharp memory and a voice that dominates courtrooms. To detractors he is the archetype of the power lawyer, unafraid to suffocate opponents with procedural maneuvers, technicalities and sheer tenacity. He strangles his adversaries not with flair but with relentlessness, cornering them until they have no oxygen left to fight back.
His career has been marked by cases that read like a shadow history of Mauritius. He stood by ministers accused of siphoning state contracts, defended business magnates entangled in offshore money laundering networks, and pushed back against regulators seeking to dismantle entrenched monopolies. Time and again Gulbul has been the man who shows up when reputations are already in tatters, the last and often only line of defense for the discredited and the disgraced.
That role has made him indispensable to the old political class. When Renganaden Padayachy, the former finance minister, and Harvesh Seegolam, the former central bank governor, were arrested in April 2025 over allegations of embezzling 300 million rupees from the Mauritius Investment Corporation, it was Gulbul who took the case. Standing before cameras outside the courthouse, he dismissed the charges as political theatre. The allegations were staggering: falsified minutes, inflated payouts, and billions diverted to private hotels. But with Gulbul at his side Padayachy was cast less as an embezzler than as a victim of political score settling.
The controversy surrounding him deepens because of his home life. Gulbul is married to Rehana Bibi Mungly Gulbul, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Mauritius. It is a union that feeds whispers of influence and conflict of interest across the island. Can justice truly be impartial when the lawyer who defends the fallen is married to the highest judge in the land? Every high profile case in which Gulbul appears inevitably raises that question. The perception, fair or not, is that he wields more than just courtroom skill. He holds proximity to the ultimate arbiter of the law.
Now, in 2025, his presence looms over AfriNIC, the African Network Information Centre. AfriNIC is the body tasked with managing the allocation of internet addresses across the continent. From the outside it looks like a purely technical registry. In Mauritius however it has become a political lightning rod, a battlefield where the old regime, the new government and international actors clash over law, power and control of Africa’s digital future.
For Gulbul, AfriNIC is not just another client. It is the perfect arena, a case where constitutional principles, international interests and local rivalries collide. The registry is mired in receiverships, injunctions and bitter litigation with Cloud Innovation Ltd, the Chinese linked company that has filed more than 50 lawsuits to protect its membership. Judges have clashed over whether the government overstepped constitutional limits in appointing investigators. And now Gulbul steps into the fray as the lawyer whose very name signals that this will not be a clean fight.
In a country where the lines between politics and justice blur easily, AfriNIC has become the ultimate test case. Investors watch nervously. Diplomats mutter about sovereignty and the rule of law. And Mauritians, long accustomed to scandals that end with settlements, wonder whether this time the fight will expose just how much justice can be bought and at what price.
The receiver and the judges’ circle
By February 2025, AfriNIC was a fragile institution, exhausted by relentless lawsuits and demoralizing delays. The first receivership had withered without elections or clarity. Into this anxious vacuum stepped Me Gowtamsingh Dabee, appointed as receiver with the confident promise of order, oversight, and a cautious return to normal. The mandate sounded neat. The reality was messy.
AfriNIC is not an ordinary company. It is a continental registry with a delicate mission and a demanding community. Every stalled ballot and every unanswered question reverberates from Dakar to Nairobi. When the new receiver took charge, expectations were intense and unforgiving. Stabilize the finances. Clean the books. Restore the vote. Restart the allocation of addresses. Do it quickly, and do it cleanly.
On paper, Dabee arrived with an imposing résumé and a polished reputation. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants, an Associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, and a holder of an Advanced Diploma in International Taxation from the Chartered Institute of Tax in the United Kingdom. He is licensed by the Financial Reporting Council, registered with the Mauritius Institute of Public Accountants, and a member of the Mauritius Institute of Directors. He built experience inside a Big Four firm in Mauritius and at Andersen Worldwide in Dubai. He audited listed groups across finance, hospitality, agriculture, retail, and construction in Mauritius, the Middle East, and East Africa. He later served as Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary for a leading construction materials subsidiary, extending his responsibilities to Seychelles affiliates, implementing Sarbanes Oxley controls, and pushing rigorous business reengineering. He holds an MBA from the University of Surrey, where his dissertation probed the effects of regional integration in the Southern African Development Community. It is an impressive catalogue.
But AfriNIC’s crisis is not impressed by catalogues. It is a crisis of confidence. And confidence is eroded by proximity. Dabee’s spouse, Renuka Devi Dabee, has been a Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court since her appointment was announced on 29 April 2019. She assumed office on 2 May 2019 after serving as Judge in Bankruptcy and as Master and Registrar, with a long and serious career across the courts. In a large jurisdiction this would be an unremarkable detail. In a small and watchful legal community, it became combustible context.
The optics are stubborn. A respected judge with a bankruptcy background in one wing of the courthouse. A newly appointed receiver guiding the fate of a regional registry in another. Every procedural choice now looks consequential. Every postponement looks strategic. The circle feels close and the room feels small. No one needs to allege misconduct for trust to evaporate. The appearance of closeness is enough to breed suspicion.
Inside AfriNIC, members want facts, not theater. They want clean voter rolls, credible election rules, transparent communication, and a timeline that is honored. Outside AfriNIC, African operators want addresses. They want certainty for networks, datacenters, and public services. They want to know that a registry founded to serve the continent is not being slowly suffocated by domestic intrigues and judicial jousting.
The receiver’s qualities are real. His credentials are serious. Yet the registry’s paralysis persists, and the questions multiply. Why did the first receivership fail. Why did elections slip again. Why did the court have to become the permanent referee of a technical body. Each answer must be specific, documented, and public. Vague assurances are no longer enough.
AfriNIC can still recover, but recovery will demand austere transparency and visible distance from the judges’ circle. It will demand rules that are written, audited, and respected. It will demand a calendar that survives pressure and a process that survives scrutiny. Only then will the registry feel less fragile and more legitimate. Only then will the continent believe that the technical steward of its digital future is guided by independence rather than intimacy.
The attorney general who once served the adversary
If Raouf Gulbul represents the resilience of the fallen regime, Gavin Patrick Cyril Glover embodies the contradictions of the new order. His appointment as Attorney General on 29 November 2024 was announced with the solemnity of constitutional ritual. That evening, in the gilded halls of the State House at Réduit, he took the Oath of Allegiance and the Oath of Office before President Prithvirajsing Roopun, acting on the advice of Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam. The ceremony was meant to project stability. Instead, it revealed just how entangled Mauritius has become in the struggles over AfriNIC.
Glover’s career is itself a study in paradox. He is a senior counsel with a reputation for clarity of thought and a steady courtroom presence, a man whose words carry both precision and restraint. But until recently he was also a lawyer for Cloud Innovation Ltd, the controversial Chinese linked company that has bombarded AfriNIC with lawsuits and fought relentlessly to secure its influence over Africa’s internet registry. Glover was even dismissed by Lu Heng, Cloud Innovation’s mercurial founder, months before his elevation to Attorney General.
The irony is hard to miss. The very lawyer who once fought to defend Cloud Innovation’s positions now stands as the government’s chief legal adviser, entrusted with defending the state against his former client. In the zero sum contest that AfriNIC has become, Glover finds himself crossing the courtroom aisle, forced to confront the strategies he once helped design.
His appointment came in a climate of mounting distrust. The judiciary was already under scrutiny for the extraordinary step of releasing a sitting Supreme Court judge, Nicolas Ohsan Bellepeau, to conduct an executive mandated investigation into AfriNIC. That move had been blocked by an injunction from another judge, Azam Neerooa, who cited constitutional violations and conflicts of interest. The public had grown weary of a carousel of receiverships, special inspectors, and legal stalemates that kept the registry frozen while Africa’s digital growth was throttled.
Into this environment walked Glover, carrying both promise and suspicion. To his supporters he is a necessary stabilizer, a legal craftsman capable of steering the government through one of the most delicate constitutional storms in its history. To his critics he is compromised, a man who cannot be fully trusted because of his past ties to Cloud Innovation.
The political theatre is unmistakable. On one side stands Gulbul, the fearless defender of the disgraced, married to the Chief Justice and unflinching in his willingness to suffocate opponents in court. On the other side now stands Glover, the government’s new legal arm, with the task of restoring credibility to institutions even as whispers about his past linger. Between them lies AfriNIC, the African Network Information Centre, an institution never designed for politics yet trapped in the crossfire of a nation where law and power are inseparable.
The question for investors and international observers is no longer whether Mauritius can manage AfriNIC. It is whether Mauritius can manage itself. Can a country that once prided itself on stability still guarantee the independence of its institutions when the lawyer of the fallen regime and the former lawyer of the adversary now shape its legal destiny? Or will justice in Port Louis remain a commodity to be bargained, bought, and repackaged under the guise of constitutional order?
A Democracy on Trial
Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam’s return to power in November 2024 was framed as a reckoning. His new government accused the old regime of falsifying debt figures, inflating growth statistics and presiding over systematic abuse of state resources. The arrests of former finance minister Renganaden Padayachy and former central bank governor Harvesh Seegolam were meant to signal that the years of impunity were over.