The latest news from ICANN is that the Estonian company EstDomains has had their Notice of Termination stayed

Based on an Estonian Court record, ICANN has reason to believe that the president of EstDomains, Vladimir Tsastsin, was convicted of credit card fraud, money laundering and document forgery on 6 February 2008.

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ICANN received a response from EstDomains regarding the notice of termination. To assess the merits of the claims made in EstDomains’ response, ICANN has stayed the termination process as ICANN analyzes these claims.

ICANN’s records indicate that EstDomains has approximately 281,000 domain names under its management.

EstDomains is widely known for its ties to cybercrime. Will a change of President be sufficient for ICANN to let them survive?

Hillar Aarelaid, team director of the Estonian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT Estonia)…maintains that Tsastsin long ago ceded control of EstDomains to organized cyber criminals in Russia.

“To understand EstDomains, one needs to understand the role of organized crime and the investments coming from that, their relations to hosting providers in Western nations and the criminals who ply their trade through these services,” Aarelaid said.