Haworth Russell (Russell Haworth)

Biography

2023: Paying for publication of book from Nominet budget

For almost two years, the registry Nominet managing the national one has been domain Great Britain rocked by scandals. Another of them was reported by the Domain Incite resource. As it turned out, in April 2023, the book of Russell Haworth, the former head of Nominet, whose leadership led to the current series of problems, is published. In April 2021, an emergency extraordinary meeting of the members of the registry took place. The main item on his agenda was the dismissal of the organization's leadership, led by Haworth, due to inefficient work and misuse of funds. However, Russell Haworth himself did not wait for the meeting, leaving his post a week before him, since the result of the vote seemed too obvious.

However, shortly before that, he signed a contract with Forbes publishing to release his book Thoughts from the Big Chair: A Leader's Guide to Digital Transformation. How successful the author himself is in digital transformation is best evidenced by the following fact. During the leadership of Haworth, the Nominet registry headed for business diversification and acquired CyGlass, a company specializing in network and information security. The purchase and subsequent investment in CyGlass's operations cost Nominet $23.5 million. In the summer of 2021, the deal was declared unsuccessful, and the registry sold CyGlass to the company's employees - for $1.

Of course, the failure also had objective reasons - for example, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. And in general, to write and publish at your own expense a book about your own successes (no matter, real or imaginary) is the right of any person. The problem, however, is that Haworth did not publish the book at his own expense. The sum of £135,000 was paid by Forbes from the Nominet budget. The current head of the registry, Andy Green, told the board of Nominet that he was not aware of this situation and learned about it only at the end of December 2022. He also added that he would hardly have approved such a deal, having the necessary powers at the time of its conclusion, but now it is not possible to terminate the contract and return the money.