This article was published on July 10, 2012

Extradition hearing for Megaupload founder pushed back to March 2013


Extradition hearing for Megaupload founder pushed back to March 2013

US government attempts to bring Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom to American shores have suffered a set back after a New Zealand court rescheduled the impending August extradition hearing to March 2013.

The hearing for Dotcom and fellow Megaupload execs Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk has been pushed back following a series of issues relating to the way that police has handled the case, as Wired reports.

The date has been changed due to a series of decisions which have set back the US case against the multi-millionaire. Last month, a New Zealand High Court judge invalidated the raid on Dotcom’s mansion, claiming that the warrants were irregular. The BBC reports Judge Helen Winkelmann as saying: “The warrants did not adequately describe the offences to which they related.”

The judge also ruled that the FBI’s process of cloning Dotcom’s hard drive in order to get evidence to the US was unlawful.

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Dotcom recently claimed that US Vice President Joe Biden was the man responsible for the closing down Megaupload, the company founder told TorrentFreak:

I do know from a credible source that it was Joe Biden, the best friend of former Senator and MPAA boss Chris Dodd, who ordered his former lawyer and now state attorney Neil MacBride to take Mega down.

The case began in January when the FBI shut down the file sharing site on charges of copyright infringement.

Dotcom has been freed on bail since February, alongside other Megaupload execs and employees detained during the investigation.

Image via USA Today

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