New Zealand is set to extradite internet mogul Kim Dotcom to the United States after the country’s justice minister gave his approval on Thursday.
Dotcom, who was born in Germany but has New Zealand residency, had been fighting his extradition to the US since 2012. He is facing charges relating to his file-sharing site Megaupload, which was shut down by the US government the same year.
New Zealand Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has now signed an extradition order for Dotcom, according to a government statement issued Thursday, paving the way for his deportation.
“I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be surrendered to the US to face trial,” Goldsmith said, according to the statement.
“As is common practice, I have allowed Mr Dotcom a short period of time to consider and take advice on my decision. I will not, therefore, be commenting further at this stage.”
A defiant Dotcom took to X, formerly Twitter, later on Thursday to write: “I love New Zealand. I’m not leaving.”
Dotcom is the flamboyant founder of Megaupload, a website which was used by millions as a fast and easy way to store massive files in a “locker” online and share them with others. Soon after his site was shut down, Dotcom was arrested by New Zealand police who descended on his luxury mansion in Auckland in two marked helicopters and had to cut their way into a locked safe room to reach him.
Along with three co-defendants, Dotcom was indicted by a US grand jury on a range of charges including conspiracy to commit racketeering, wire fraud, conspiracy to infringe copyright on a commercial scale and money laundering. The four men are accused by US authorities of profiting from copyright infringement through the website.
Dotcom and his co-defendants deny the accusations and had been fighting hard against extradition, arguing that Megaupload was simply a file-sharing website and that they shouldn’t be blamed for what others were uploading to it.
Three New Zealand courts ruled against them, throwing out that argument and claims that they couldn’t be extradited on charges of profiting from copyright infringement because it is not a crime in New Zealand.
The final decision on whether to extradite Dotcom rested with the justice minister.
US law is heavily weighted in favor of copyright holders, and has been criticized for stifling innovation and harming consumers, and for exporting US copyright regulations to other countries through free trade agreements.