Kim Dotcom’s extradition to the US has been approved. Trying to remember 14 years of headlines about the German-born internet provocateur? We can help.
On Thursday, after more than a decade, the New Zealand government agreed to extradite internet activist/provocateur Kim Dotcom to the US. The saga has involved more than a decade of legal fights and appeals, a brief appearance from John Banks and Hone Harawira and a helicopter raid. It has also exemplified how the New Zealand immigration system prioritises residency for the wealthy and how far US authorities are willing to go to defend copyright law on their corporations’ behalf. But how did the businessman end up in New Zealand, and what has he been accused of? Here’s an abbreviated timeline.
1974: Kim Dotcom is born Kim Schmitz in Germany.
1990s: As a teenager and young adult in Germany, Dotcom develops a reputation for hacking and bragging about it. He claimed to have given $20 million stolen from Citibank to Greenpeace and hacked Nasa, for example, but there was no evidence that he really did either of those things.
He gets interviewed by international media many times as the face of cyber crime, and he is arrested multiple times by German authorities for selling hacked phone numbers and conducting fraud. Throughout this time, Dotcom makes quite a lot of money through selling and buying various companies, including a holding company called Kimvestor.
2005: Dotcom starts Megaupload, a company for storing and accessing files online. It includes image, video, music and advertising services, and is registered in Hong Kong, where he is living at the time. Visitors to the website are able to watch other users’ content; unsurprisingly, with limited restrictions, it becomes a popular site for watching and downloading pirated movies, listening to pirated music, and watching porn. It makes money in the same way as YouTube, with ad breaks, although some users also pay for premium subscriptions. It quickly gains millions of users.
Dotcom also officially changes his surname.
2010: Kim Dotcom moves to New Zealand, and is granted residency under a category for people who have invested at least $10m into the country. He throws himself into life in New Zealand by donating $50,000 to John Banks’ mayoral campaign, which, it’s later discovered, Banks asked to be split into multiple donations so it could be anonymous, and Banks doesn’t disclose properly.
2012: On January 5, an indictment is filed in the US, charging Dotcom and other company officials with copyright infringement, money laundering and other crimes.
By now Dotcom is living in a rented mansion in Coatesville. Two weeks later, on January 20, the New Zealand police conduct an armed raid on the property, coordinated with the US and international authorities as they seize Megaupload servers around the world. Around 70 armed police, as well as police dogs and their handlers, arrive by helicopter, and arrest Dotcom and three associates. Dotcom’s bank accounts are frozen, and his New Zealand assets, including millions of dollars of cash, luxury cars and works of art, are seized. Dotcom is taken to Mount Eden Prison in Auckland.
After a month in prison at the request of the US, Dotcom is granted bail, with the judge saying that he doesn’t have any ability to flee without access to his bank accounts. By June, the Crown has admitted it used the wrong warrant to seize Dotcom’s property, and broke the law by giving the FBI hard drives taken by the New Zealand police. So begins years of legal proceedings, with Dotcom trying to avoid being extradited to the US.
It’s revealed in September that the GCSB spied on Dotcom and surveilled his communications before the raid, which was illegal, as Dotcom is a New Zealand permanent resident. John Key apologises for the spying on the government’s behalf.
2014: Dotcom launches the Internet Party to contest the New Zealand election, which forms an alliance with Hone Harawira’s Mana Movement; Dotcom provides most of the funding. Former Alliance MP Laila Harré is named leader. The Internet Party gets 1.42% of the vote in the 2014 election. Dotcom repeatedly says through the election campaign that he can prove then prime minister John Key knew about his copyright infringement case before he was arrested. However, when he reveals the email at a “Moment of Truth” event in the Auckland Town Hall, it turns out to be a fake.
2015: After years of different legal endeavours costing Dotcom millions of dollars, extradition proceedings begin in Auckland’s District Court in September. The American government wants Dotcom in the US where he and other Megaupload collaborators can be charged for their copyright infringement cases. The judge rules in the US’s favour; Dotcom immediately appeals.
2017: An appeal case is heard in New Zealand’s High Court; the judge rules that violating copyright isn’t a criminal offence, but Dotcom could be extradited on other criminal fraud charges.
2018: The New Zealand Court of Appeal disagrees with the High Court judgement, saying that possessing digital copyrighted works with the intention to share them is a criminal offence, meaning Dotcom and the other Megaupload men could be extradited to a trial in the US.
2019: Dotcom launches an appeal of this decision in New Zealand’s Supreme Court.
2020: The Supreme Court says that Dotcom can be extradited to the US – but he’s also allowed to conduct a judicial review over potential issues through the legal case.
2022: Dotcom, now living in Queenstown with his New Zealand wife and their child, gets really into supporting conspiracies about the Russian invasion of Ukraine on X/Twitter. He is supportive of Russia and says that thousands of ethnically Russian civilians were killed by Ukrainian forces before the Russian invasion. (This is false.)
2023: Mathias Ortman and Bram van der Kolk, Dotcom’s Megaupload colleagues, plead guilty to various charges, admitting Megaupload was an illegal enterprise. Ortmann is given two years and seven months in prison, while van der Kolk gets two years and six months. Finn Batato, the other defendant, dies of cancer around the same time. Contact between the men were limited; they told the New Zealand Herald they hadn’t spoken to Dotcom for eight years.
2024: In June, the Court of Appeal allows Dotcom’s files and digital accounts to be released to the FBI. On August 15, justice minister Paul Goldsmith signs Dotcom’s extradition order. True to form, Dotcom says he will appeal, as he claims he won’t get a fair trial in the US.