Dear All, On April 21 2011, The ICANN Board of Directors voted to approve an increase of the Registrar Accreditation Application Fee to offset the costs for ICANN to conduct additional due diligence checks on applicants applying to become an ICANN-accredited registrar. http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-21apr11-en.htm#3 Registrars are the organizations accredited by ICANN that processes the registration for the domain name (once the domain name is available) and transmits the name and registration details to the registry operator which operates the registry (the master database) for the generic Top Level Domain (gTLDs). Currently, there are 21 gTLDs including .com, .net and .org

From July 1 2011, Applicants applying to become an ICANN-accredited registrar will pay a non-refundable fee of $3,500 US.

The additional due diligence checks on applicants will include reviews of: * Criminal records; * Credit records; * Financial history and solvency; * Corporate/company structure and ownership. ICANN Announcement: http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-01jun11-en.htm Kind Regards, Dev Anand Teelucksingh LACRALO Secretariat