Kim Dotcom

Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz, 21 January 1974), also known as Kimble and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, is a German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur and political activist who resides in Queenstown, New Zealand. He first rose to fame in Germany in the 1990s as an Internet entrepreneur and was convicted on charges of computer fraud in 1994. Dotcom is the founder and former CEO of the now-defunct file hosting service Megaupload (2005–2012). The company was financially successful, but in 2012, the United States Department of Justice seized its website and pressed charges against Dotcom, including criminal copyright infringement, money laundering, racketeering and wire fraud. Dotcom was residing in New Zealand at the time; at the request of US authorities, New Zealand police raided his home in 2012 and arrested him. Dotcom posted bail and has been going through legal proceedings ever since to avoid extradition to the United States. In 2017, a New Zealand court ruled that Dotcom, as well as co-accused Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Carter Edwards, could be extradited to the US on fraud charges related to Megaupload. Dotcom denies any wrongdoing and has accused US authorities of pursuing a vendetta against him on behalf of politically influential Hollywood studios. In 2018, the New Zealand Court of Appeal upheld the lower court's ruling. Dotcom appealed to the Supreme Court of New Zealand, which ruled in 2020 that Dotcom could be extradited to the United States, but that he and three co-defendants were entitled to challenge the decision through a judicial review. In 2013, Dotcom launched another cloud storage service called Mega, although he later severed all ties with the service in 2015. He also started and funded the Internet Party. The party contested the 2014 New Zealand general election under an electoral alliance with the Mana Movement and contested the 2017 general election independently, but failed to win any seats at either election.