Kim Dotcom, who is facing criminal charges relating to the defunct file-sharing website Megaupload, is to be extradited to the US, the New Zealand justice minister has said.
German-born Dotcom has New Zealand residency and has been fighting extradition to the US since 2012 following an FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion.
The justice minister, Paul Goldsmith, had signed an extradition order for Dotcom, a spokesperson said on Thursday.
“I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be surrendered to the US to face trial,” Goldsmith said in a statement.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Dotcom said: “The obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload,” in what appears to be a reference to the extradition order.
I think it only makes sense to criminally charge the CEO’s of AI companies if the same thing is being done to Kim Dotcom
—Regardless, my initial post was meant to be satire
—Personally speaking I don’t think all laws on the books are ethical, nor do I think everything that’s unethical is against the law. With that in mind, I don’t care if Kim Dotcom was an asshole because I can’t earnestly argue on behalf of our Intellectual Property laws in the first place. I think they create a framework that is so far beyond reasonable, that my only response is to condone piracy as I have done since long before they raided his mansion.