In the past week, the website of Ethos Capital, the private equity firm that offered $1.13bn to take control of the popular .org registry, was updated to list ex-ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade as its joint head.
The change is significant because it was Chehade's involvement in the attempted .org purchase that first alerted internet users that the deal deserved closer scrutiny.
The sale was ultimately vetoed several months later by ICANN, but only after the Attorney General of California got involved and sent a last-minute letter to LA-based ICANN telling it not to approve the deal in part due to the "lack of transparency" on Ethos Capital.
Part of that lack of transparency was who would actually own the .org registry after the sale: behind Ethos was a complex structure of no less than four shell companies that were all registered on the same day in Delaware with the prefix "Purpose Domains." Ethos Capital refused to divulge who all the directors of those companies actually were despite repeat requests, including from ICANN, which had the power to refuse the sale.
Chehade's close link to the proposed sale was only noticed because he had registered Ethos Capital's .org domain name, EthosCapital.org, under his own name on May 7, 2019. The company Ethos Capital LLC was registered in Delaware one week later, on May 14, 2019.
Acting merely as "advisor" until now allowed plausible deniability when pointed questions were made to The Internet Society and PIR (Public Interest Registry) concerning Ethos Capital.
Hmmmm 🤔
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2020, @01:42PM (1 child)
The devil you know is better than the one you don't.
Perhaps a restart is the game plan.
Better to incrementally fix ICANN than try to start over?
Hopefully this conflict of interest negates any lingering obligations of ICANN to these folks.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 24 2020, @01:30AM
I'm not feeling that over here. I think turnover in devils might also create incentives to decentralize DNS.
Then Ethos will be on the ground floor along with everyone else. They don't have an exclusive angle in that case.
The thing is, this indicates a great deal of rot in the ICANN system. You'd have to at least remove a good portion of the staff plus structural reforms. And despite that, it'll still be a big rent seeker target.