The US government can seize millions of dollars from Internet mogul Kim Dotcom, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
Since 2012, Dotcom, who founded the file-sharing website Megaupload, has been fighting extradition from New Zealand to the United States on piracy charges. Prosecutors say that Megaupload produced at least US$175 million ($243m) in illegal assets from fees and ads for its owners and executives from its creation in 2005 to its demise in 2012. What's left, they say, is the US$75m being kept in Hong Kong and New Zealand.
While both countries put restraining orders on funds held there, both have allowed Dotcom and his associates to withdraw millions for legal and living expenses. Additionally, the New Zealand restraining order could last only three years. So in 2014, the United States moved to seize Dotcom's assets, along with those of his associates, in both countries.
They won a default judgment in Virginia federal court last year.
But Dotcom and his co-defendants argued that they were unconstitutionally deprived of the right to defend themselves in that civil forfeiture case.