Kim Dotcom, the German who faces criminal charges in connection with the defunct file-sharing site Megaupload, will be extradited to the United States from New Zealand.
Dotcom has been fighting extradition to the United States since 2012 after an FBI raid in Oakland.
His site Megaupload was taken down in 2012 after it was discovered that illegal music and videos were being shared on a large scale. Movie studios and record labels are said to have lost $500 million in revenue.
Justice Secretary Paul Goldsmith has now signed the Dotcom extradition order.
The company's chief marketing officer Finn Patato and technical director and co-founder Matthias Ortmann, both from Germany, were arrested along with a third Dutch executive, Bram van der Kolk, in 2012 alongside Dotcom.
Ortman and van der Kolk agreed to be sentenced to prison in New Zealand in 2023, but will not be extradited. Batatu died in New Zealand in 2022.
“I’ve made mistakes in the past, and I have to pay for them now,” Dotcom said several years ago. “(But) Steve Jobs was once a hacker and Martha Stewart is back in business. I’m 37, married, with three wonderful kids and two more on the way, and I know I’m not a bad person.
The US debt and money printing system is collapsing. The West is heading towards an economic wasteland. The Middle East is burning. Russia is dominating Ukraine and NATO. BRICS is working to end US hegemony and the fake “rules-based order.” American puppets are failing everywhere. Genocide,…
– Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 13, 2024
