A New Zealand Justice Minister has signed an extradition order to send Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom to the US, where he is expected to face charges relating to criminal copyright infringement, racketeering, money laundering, and wire fraud.
The decision comes over a decade after the US Justice Department charged Dotcom for his involvement in creating and operating Megaupload, a former file-sharing site active from 2005 to 2012 that has been accused of facilitating online piracy. Dotcom was arrested in New Zealand in 2012, and has been fighting to stop his extradition to the US ever since.
"I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr. Dotcom should be surrendered to the US to face trial," said New Zealand Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith. "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."
Unsurprisingly, Dotcom is still looking to resist his extradition. "I love New Zealand. I’m not leaving," he wrote in a post on X early Thursday morning.
Earlier this week, Dotcom slammed New Zealand in another post, referring to it as an "obedient US colony."
"The obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload, unsolicited, and what copyright holders were able to remove with direct delete access instantly and without question," Dotcom claimed.
US authorities seized Megaupload's domains upon Dotcom's arrest in 2012. But the founder launched a new platform, an encrypted file storage service dubbed Mega, about a year later. In 2016, Dotcom tried to relaunch Megaupload. Since then, he also created a Bitcoin service called Bitcache, which went under last year over unpaid legal fees. In 2018, Dotcom filed a lawsuit against New Zealand, alleging he suffered $6.8 billion in business losses because of the raid on his house and assets seized upon his arrest.