Kim Dotcom, the internet entrepreneur fighting deportation from New Zealand to the United States on charges relating to his file-sharing website Megaupload, has suffered a “serious stroke”, a post on his X account said Monday.
“I have the best health professionals helping me to make a recovery. I will be back as soon as I can. Please be patient and pray for my family and I,” the post said.
Dotcom’s US-based lawyer, Ira Rothken, confirmed to The Associated Press that the contents of the statement were accurate. Rothken would not say whether Dotcom or someone else wrote the post and did not provide further details.
Usually a prolific X user, the 50-year-old internet mogul last posted to the site on November 6. His New Zealand-based lawyer, Ron Mansfield, told the New Zealand Herald on Tuesday that Dotcom suffered the stroke on November 7 and was expected to remain hospitalised for some time. His prognosis was uncertain, Mansfield said.
News of his ill health comes during a protracted battle by the US government to extradite the Finnish-German millionaire to the United States from New Zealand to face charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering.
In August, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced that Dotcom should be surrendered to the United States to face trial, a ruling intended to cap a 12-year legal battle. A date for the extradition was not set and Goldsmith said Dotcom would be allowed “a short period of time to consider and take advice” on the decision.
Rothken at the time wrote on X that Dotcom intended to challenge the order in court through a judicial review, in which a judge is asked to evaluate whether an official’s decision was reached correctly.
Largest criminal copyright case in US history
The saga stretches to the 2012 arrest of Dotcom in a dramatic raid on his Auckland mansion, along with other company officers. Prosecutors said the once wildly popular Megaupload raked in at least $175 million (NZ$300 million) — mainly from people who used the site to illegally download songs, television shows and movies — before the FBI shut it down earlier that year.
Lawyers for Dotcom and the others arrested had argued that it was the users of the site, founded in 2005, who chose to pirate material, not its founders. But prosecutors argued the men were the architects of a vast criminal enterprise, with the Department of Justice describing it as the largest criminal copyright case in US history.
The men fought the order for years — lambasting the investigation and arrests — but in 2021 New Zealand’s Supreme Court ruled that Dotcom and two other men could be extradited. It remained up to the country’s Justice Minister to decide if the extradition should proceed.
“I love New Zealand. I’m not leaving,” German-born Dotcom wrote on X in August. He did not respond to an AP request for comment at the time, or on Monday.
Two of Dotcom’s former business partners pleaded guilty to the charges they faced and served time in a New Zealand jail, avoiding extradition to the US Prosecutors abandoned an extradition bid against another, who has since died of cancer.
