[Chapter-delegates] Message from Internet Society Audit Committee Chair

[Veni Markovski]

On Sun, Nov 8, 2020 at 22:05 John Levine <isocmember at johnlevine.com> wrote:

> In article <
> CAN7p9b5XxaMESfjoo9LMc5vCcR8THDwM_BO-mc8RN9JRqN+BYA at mail.gmail.com> you
> write:
> >One also might not understand why there’s an argument about the CoI policy
> >at all, since ISOC admitted it is not a good policy and have told us it
> >will be changing it.
>
> No, that is not even approximately what we said.


“ While our CoI policy was adopted unanimously by the Board of Trustees
earlier this year, the Board has determined that a section addressing a
conflict under the “Independent Policy View” section needs further review.”


As I wrote (and will write again): there’s a clear evidence, now more than
before, that there’s a cross-cultural difference between trustees, who are
from the US, and whose native language is English, and chapter leaders, who
are not from the US, and whose native language is not English, and whose
English may be not even their second, but third or fourth language. To me,
as coming from the non-US folks, the quote message, which started the
thread is a recognition that the policy is not good (although accepted
unanimously). To you “it’s not even approximately” that’s.


>
> If you don't believe us


Where did I ever say I don’t believe you personally, or that I don’t
believe Andrew, the whole BoT, or anyone at ISOC?? Might I kindly suggest a
reference to my continuous stress in the importance of understanding
cross-cultural differences? If I don’t believe you, I would have stayed so
in direct terms, to avoid second guessing.

when we explain why it would be a legal
> impossibility to let the same person be both an ISOC trustee and a
> leader of a chapter eligible for funding, I guess we're done.


At the risk of not understanding the last part (why would you be done, if
the assumption above do not reflect my kind and sincere attempt to
understand what’s happening), what I head from Andrew (hope I’m not
misrepresenting his words, but in bed and trying not to fall asleep), there
are issues with the IRS, and checks they could run, if there’s such a case
of doubts of potential CoI. He didn’t say it would be legally impossible,
but just difficult or challenging for ISOC to deal with possible checks and
investigations by the IRS. What you say is different, and if this was said
in the beginning, the only material thing would have been ISOC legal
counsel opinion on that matter (or an independent tax lawyer’s), and we
would have been done — indeed :)


>
> R's,
> John
>
-- 

Best regards,
Veni Markovski
http://www.veni.com
pgp: 5BA1366E veni at veni.com
<http://www.veni.com/>

The opinions expressed above are those of the author,
not of any organizations, associated with or related to
the author in any given way.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/private/chapter-delegates/attachments/20201108/323cfa27/attachment.htm>