Dotcom extradition cleared by appeal court

By Australian Associated Press

Published: 00:00 BST, 5 July 2018 | Updated: 00:00 BST, 5 July 2018

Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom’s extradition to the United States has been cleared by New Zealand’s second-highest court.

The German-born tech mogul this year asked the NZ Court of Appeal to overturn a decision approving his extradition but was on Thursday morning turned down.

The Megaupload founder and his three co-accused – Mathias Ortmann, Bran van der Kolk and Finn Botato – were arrested in 2012 in a dramatic police raid and charged with a series of copyright-related offences on behalf of authorities in the US over their roles in running the file-sharing website.

“An extradition hearing is not a trial on the merits, and the evidence relied on by the United States discloses a clear prima facie case to support the allegations that the appellants conspired to, and did, breach copyright wilfully and on a massive scale for commercial gain,” the court said in a statement.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has led the case and claims Megaupload was a criminal conspiracy that earned the men $US175 million ($A237 million). If extradited and found guilty in the US, the quartet could face decades in jail.

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