> If the $500k covers fees pre-ICANN then who were the services rendered on
> behalf of (and who signed off on the retainer)? IANA? Then it's IANA's
> bill. Did ICANN pick up IANA's bills?
Good questions.
Certainly these debts are going to tie the hands of any sucessor boards of
ICANN who may be forced into certain undesirable practices to cover the
debts of their unelected predecessors.
How could this mess have happened?
A fundamental tenet of good business practice is this:
No invoice shall be paid unless there exists a valid purchase
order in effect prior to the delivery of the goods or services
being invoiced.
Another fundamental tenet of good business practice is this:
The corporation shall issue no purchase order for, or otherwise
commit itself to pay for, goods or services in an amount in excess
of $XXX without express approval, in advance, of the following
officers: X, Y, and Z. In addition, for amounts in excess of
$YYYY, the purchase order or commitment must be approved, in
advance, by the Board of Directors.
ICANN didn't even get either of these right. Or rather, ICANN is so
opaque that there is no evidence that they got either of these right.
But then again, the board was selected (or so we believe, but we don't
know) for their value as luminaries, not for their business acumen.
The original form of the ICANN organic documents were even more lax than
they are now. The BWG and ORSC pushed (with partial sucess) for their to
be at least some minimal form of business processes in ICANN.
--karl--
