This week, Kim Dotcom, the founder of the once enormously popular file-sharing website Megaupload, lost a 12-year battle to stop his deportation from New Zealand to the United States due to accusations of money laundering, racketeering, and copyright infringement.
Paul Goldsmith, the justice minister for New Zealand, revealed on Friday that he had determined Dotcom ought to be turned over to the United States for trial, ending — for the time being — a protracted legal battle.
Goldsmith stated that Dotcom would have “a short period to consider and take advice” on the judgment, but no timeframe for the extradition was given.
Dotcom wrote on X this week, saying, “Don’t worry, I have a plan.”
He did not provide further details, but Ira Rothken, a member of his legal team, said on the website that a judicial review application was being drafted.
Under this scenario, a judge in New Zealand would be requested to assess Goldsmith’s ruling.
Laptops 1000The story began when Dotcom and other company officers were apprehended in a spectacular raid on his Auckland mansion in 2012.
Before the FBI shut it down earlier that year, prosecutors said Megaupload made at least $175 million, mostly from users who downloaded music, TV episodes, and movies illegally.
Attorneys for the Finnish-German millionaire and the other people detained had maintained that the site’s users, not its founders, were the ones who decided to steal content when it was first launched in 2005.
The Department of Justice described the case as the largest criminal copyright case in American history. Prosecutors, however, contended that the men were the masterminds of a massive criminal organization.
After years of protesting the order and criticizing the investigation and arrests, the men won their case, and in 2021 the Supreme Court of New Zealand decided that Dotcom and the other two men could be extradited.
The country’s minister of justice still had the final say over whether or not the extradition should go forward.
Three of Goldsmith’s forerunners refrained from making an announcement.
Following an election that resulted in a change in New Zealand’s government, Goldsmith was named minister of justice in November.
Goldsmith said in his statement, “I have received extensive advice from the Ministry of Justice on this matter” and carefully evaluated all available material.
“I adore New Zealand.” German-born Dotcom posted on X on Thursday, saying, “I’m not leaving.”
In June 2023, two of his former business associates, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk, entered guilty pleas to the accusations brought against them in a New Zealand court and were given two-and-a-half-year prison sentences.
The United States gave up its attempts to extradite them in return.
Earlier, the prosecution had given up on trying to extradite Finn Batato, a fourth business officer who had been taken into custody in New Zealand.
After going back to Germany, Batato passed away in 2022 from cancer.
Andrus Nomm, an Estonian computer programmer for Megaupload, entered a guilty plea in 2015 to charges of conspiring to conduct felony copyright infringement.
He was given a year and a day sentence in federal prison in the United States.
