Last week, New Zealand’s High Court ruled in favour of extraditing Kim Dotcom and his co-accused to the United States over their roles in the now-defunct file-sharing business Megaupload.
The United States of America are seeking to have Dotcom (and the three other co-accused) extradited on thirteen charges, including allegations of conspiracy to commit racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering, and wire fraud, among others.
The High Court found that, although Dotcom had not committed an offence under New Zealand copyright law, he should nevertheless still face extradition. The High Court press release said that: “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement amounts to a conspiracy to defraud and is therefore is an extradition offence listed in the US-NZ Treaty.”
Dotcom’s legal team stated that: “Parliament made a clear and deliberate decision not to criminalise this type of alleged conduct by internet service providers, making them not responsible for the acts of their users. For the Court to then permit the same conduct to be categorised as a type of fraud in our view disrupts Parliament’s clear intent.” They spoke of their extreme disappointment at the decision but also noted “we are far from defeated.”
Dotcom will now take the case to the Court of Appeal. Ron Mansfield, a barrister who is part of Dotcom’s legal team, is “confident that this last point [Court of Appeal], which would prevent extradition in this complex and unprecedented legal case, will be resolved in Kim’s favour in a manner consistent with Parliament’s intent, international law and, importantly one might think, the United States’ own law.”
At the outset of this issue, the New Zealand police, acting on a US Federal prosecutor’s request, famously raided Dotcom’s $30 million Auckland mansion on 20 January 2012. The High Court subsequently deemed that the warrants they relied upon were ‘invalid’ and that the FBI taking some of Dotcom’s data offshore was an illegal act.
Shortly after last week’s judgement was delivered, Dotcom tweeted: “I never lived there. I never travelled there. I had no company there. But all I worked for now belongs to the U.S.”