The other side might be christel, not the libera.chat ops.

I think it's just Christel needed money and this guy took advantage and no one or almost no one with admin/operational duties was informed. So I think the legality of this transaction was dubious.

But, I don't think it matters that much anymore. People just need to get the word out that the network has a new name.

so... she told Andrew that he now is the owner of freenode, whilst simultaneously telling the staff that he wasn't?

whilst Andrew paid her (seemingly in exchange for ownership)

not a bad deal for her... if that's a correct assessment then it certainly looks like that could be considered to be fraud

Yeah I've come to the same conclusion but idk why the staff didn't say this in the first place. They only said that they didn't know he was the owner.