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PoliticsMay 8, 2016

The hunt for Panama Papers’ John Doe, part one: is it Kim Dotcom?

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Theories have been circulating suggesting the mysterious figure behind the Panama Papers leaks may in fact be the NZ-based internet entrepreneur. The Spinoff begins its fearless mission to unmask John Doe by asking, is it you, Kim Dotcom?

Rare is the day when the two most voluble and entertaining thought leaders of the New Zealand blogosphere agree, but so it is on the matter of the identity of the Panama Papers’ “John Doe”, the name adopted by the person behind the massive information leak.

Both Cameron ‘Whaleoil’ Slater and Martyn ‘Daily Blog’ Bradbury – along with various other novice online sleuths – have been speculating that John Doe is Kim Dotcom, the Mega-founder being sought for extradition from New Zealand by the US Justice Department.

kimdoe

(Update: Bradbury says he is “not speculating it is Kim”.)

The pseudonymous whistleblower and (probably) hacker published a manifesto at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ site early on Saturday morning (NZ time), which scolded a number of issues and various countries, but singled out just one world leader: John Key.

“Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand has been curiously quiet about his country’s role in enabling the financial fraud Mecca that is the Cook Islands,” wrote Mr Doe. The NZ prime minister scoffed the matter away, suggesting that the writer clearly didn’t understand that the Cooks was a separate sovereign nation, saying, “I have as much responsibility for tax in the Cook Islands as I do for Russia.”

In his post on the Dotcom-Doe theory, drawing on a commenter’s postulations, Slater goes so far as to link it back to his own Dirty Politics travails, saying:

I suspect Key will have second thoughts about cutting me adrift and feeding me to the wolves at the same time as doing absolutely nothing to try and identify the criminal hackers, the complicit media working with criminals, and the people in the Labour Party that are funding, facilitating and abusing the fruits of crime.

So is Kim Dotcom John Doe?

We asked him. Brace yourself, here is the answer:

“I’m not John Doe, Satoshi Nakamoto or Rawshark. I’m Megaracer, slayer of Crota and Atheon, champion of the court of Oryx and the prison of elders. I’m a guardian of the tower and defender of the light. Anyone who disrupts the darkness is my ally. Where Justice is hollow the Gjallahorn rules. I have a fireteam of 6 and we all have Gjallahorns.”

So there you have it.

Conclusion: Kim Dotcom has been playing a lot of video games and is probably not John Doe.

megaracer

Keep going!