The Report of the Evaluation Committee is infected by a serious conflict of interest
which explains the true motivation behind the Report's favorable recommendations
for applicants CORE and Afilias: All three members of the Evaluation Committee’s
“Business Financial Team” are employees of Arthur Andersen. This company is
not impartial. Arthur Andersen was hired by the Core Internet Council of Registrars
(“CORE”) in connection with that entity’s selection of registrar members, and, according
to published media accounts, received $1,000 per application submitted to CORE.
Despite this prior relationship with CORE, these Arthur Andersen employees were involved
in the Evaluation Committee’s review of CORE’s proposal to operate the “.nom” TLD.
In addition, CORE is part of the proposal submitted to ICANN by Afilias, LLC.
Moreover, the proposals submitted by CORE and Afilias were included within
the handful of proposals “recommended” by the Evaluation Committee. Specifically
with respect to CORE’s proposal, the Committee concluded, inter alia, that CORE’s
proposal “is stronger than other plans based upon its category from a business perspective.”
Afilias received high praise as well: “Overall, this is a strong application in this
category from a business perspective.” The Report does not disclose the conflict
of interest of Arthur Andersen with respect to CORE and Afilias, but does state that
with respect to any engagement involving Arthur Andersen and an applicant for a TLD,
“no member of the evaluation team had worked on” any such prior engagement, and that
the “size and nature of each engagement was determined to be highly unlikely to influence
any aspect of the evaluation.” The engagement by Arthur Andersen for CORE clearly
does not fall into such a de minimis category. Arthur Anderson has an unmistakable
conflict of interest that infects the entire Report. For this reason alone,
the Board should ignore the Report.
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