LOS ANGELES—More than two years after it took place, the raid in January 2012 by police on Kim Dotcom's Auckland mansion has been deemed legal by the New Zealand Court of Appeal, overturning a lower court ruling. Actually, it was the search warrants issued to police at the time that were deemed by the appeals court to be valid.
"The country's Court of Appeal on Wednesday said the warrants used to seize some 135 electronic items from Mr. Dotcom, the German founder of online storage site Megaupload.com, and his associate Bram van der Kolk more than two years ago were lawful," reported the Wall Street Journal. "The decision means the documents can now be used against him by U.S. prosecutors."
According to Ira Rothken, an American lawyer for both Dotcom and Megaupload, the ruling will likely be appealed to the New Zealand Supreme Court.
Still, the ruling is seen as a serious setback for Dotcom, who has been steadfastly fighting extradition to the United States on federal charges related to "running an international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works, through Megaupload.com and other related sites, generating more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and causing more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners," the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation alleged in 2012.
The feds shuttered Megaupload at the time, effectively cutting off access to an innumerable number of files kept in online storage by an equally unknown number of individuals. In June of last year, Dotcom claimed that "millions of personal Megaupload files have been destroyed by the file-hosting service Leaseweb, despite repeated requests from his lawyers that Leaseweb protect the servers while Dotcom is prosecuted by U.S. authorities."
Today, in reaction to the ruling—which also found that "a decision by local police to allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to remove some electronic items to the U.S. breached a New Zealand court order"—Dotcom tweeted sarcastically, "The only party found to have committed piracy in the #Megaupload case: The FBI. Shipping my hard drives unlawfully to the US."
As AVN has previously reported, Dotcom's next extradition hearing, which was supposed to take place in November of last year, was rescheduled for April of this year.
Photo: Kim Dotcom in the docket during his arraignment in 2012.
