Supreme Court Declines to Hear Kim Dotcom’s Civil Asset Forfeiture Appeal
by Tom McKay
Former Megaupload chief Kim Dotcom’s long, wild ride through the courts crashed into another setback Monday, with the Supreme Court declining to hear an appeal in the 2012 seizure of his assets in New Zealand.
US prosecutors had charged Dotcom with crimes including racketeering and money laundering related to Megaupload, the file-hosting service they said he operated as a thinly veiled piracy site. In January 2012, New Zealand authorities armed with rifles and tactical gear and accompanied by police helicopters raided his rented mansion at the behest of the US, seizing millions of dollars in property and freezing Dotcom’s overseas bank accounts.
The US government has been trying to get its hands on $40 million of those assets since 2014, saying Dotcom’s web empire profited by $175 million at the cost of some $500 million in stolen intellectual property from the entertainment industry. In 2016, an appeals court ruled the civil forfeiture could move forward because Dotcom never came to the US to contest it—thus making himself subject to “fugitive disentitlement.” That more or less means US courts consider him to have become a fugitive and thus unable to contest the seizures.