Barrister Clive Elliott told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking about the next steps to expect from the Kim Dotcom saga. Video / NewstalkZB
Bram van der Kolk and Matthias Ortmann will testify against Kim Dotcom in the United States court case
Their testimony was part of a deal with the FBI that led to guilty pleas and 13 months in prison
The two men have built a world-class cloud storage business based in NZ since their arrest
The two Megaupload programmers who swung a deal to serve their time in New Zealand have been released on parole - and now one faces deportation.
Parole Board reports show the men were released from prison in July, just over a year after they were jailed for their part in the Megaupload file storage website which the FBI has called a $500 million fraud.
The case against Dotcom has only grown over time - the deal van der Kolk and Ortmann cut with authorities to plead and serve their time in New Zealand included being available to testify if the Megaupload criminal trial in the US ever goes ahead.
Their testimony will add to that from Andrus Nomm, another of the accused who agreed to provide evidence when he cut a deal in 2015 that saw him serve a year in prison.
The parole reports, released to the Herald today, show the men appeared seeking release on May 21 with a “safety plan” and discussion about reintegrating to society.
The difference between the two reports was the issue of deportation - van der Kolk is not liable to be ejected from New Zealand because he was a resident at the time of his arrest and has potentially become a citizen since then.
Kim Dotcom near his home at Glenorchy, outside Queenstown.
Van der Kolk was living in Auckland at the time of his arrest, with armed police raiding his home at the same time officers stormed the Coatesville mansion where Dotcom was living. His guests at the time - also arrested - were Megaupload employees Ortmann, who also held shares in the company, and Finn Batato, an advertising executive with the business, who died of pancreatic cancer in June 2022.
As Ortmann was in New Zealand as a visitor, having travelled with Batato in January 2012 for Dotcom’s birthday party, he now faces the prospect of being deported to Germany.
The differences in their situations are revealed through the Parole Board’s work on integration plans on release from prison. The board’s report said it had to consider whether the plan for Ortmann would work in Germany if he was deported.
Along with other general conditions, Ortmann also had to pledge to surrender to Immigration NZ if an order was made for his deportation and to not return unless allowed to do so by law.
The parole board reports for the men set out as a condition that they tell their probation officer of “any device capable of accessing the internet that you may use or access” except for those linked to their employment.
The sentence was passed in June 2023. With the release in July, the two men served 13 months of their sentences in prison with the remainder to be completed in the community under a range of conditions.
Van der Kolk and Ortmann spent their time after the January 2012 raid developing the cloud storage site Mega which has grown to become an international success.
The Tech Radar site reviewed it in July as “one of the best cloud storage services” available. In 2022, the men told the Herald neither had spoken to Dotcom for eight years.
Lawyer Dr Kai-Cheung Leung, whose specialisations include immigration law, said inmates in New Zealand on travel visas who were then released, could be subject to deportation liability notices from Immigration NZ.
The original Megaupload accused - Bram van der Kolk, Kim Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann and Finn Batato. Photo / File
Once the notice was issued it could be challenged through the Immigration & Protection Tribunal, he said, with the process taking up to two years.
There were seven men arrested in the FBI-led global raid on Megaupload in January 2012. Of those, four were arrested in New Zealand - Dotcom, van der Kolk, Ortmann and Batato.
That leaves Dotcom as the last man standing in New Zealand from the police operation which led to legal and political fallout that has spanned years.
Of the three arrested in other countries, Nomm served a year in prison. Graphic designer Julius Bencko was arrested in the Czech Republic last year but has recently posted on social media. Sven Echternach in Germany was the only one of the seven Megaupload executives named in the FBI indictment not to be touched by the law - Germany does not have an extradition agreement with the US.
The discovery in 2013 the GCSB - the government’s electronic spying agency - had unlawfully snooped on Dotcom and van der Kolk’s communications paved the way for a sprawling overhaul of New Zealand’s intelligence community, the laws governing it and the oversight to which it is subject.
The case also saw Dotcom launch the Internet Party to challenge the 2014 election although the failed Moment of Truth event at the Auckland Town Hall was among events that preceded a low vote for the new political movement.
In a lengthy X post on August 19 - which Dotcom said “may be the most important post you’ll ever read” - the internet entrepreneur quoted from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a denounced fabrication that claims to be a record of a 19th-century meeting of Jewish elders conspiring to control the world.
In posting it, Dotcom said: “I’m not antisemitic or a Nazi. I’m simply a former hacker with great analytical skills who understands what’s happening in the world”.
At the time, the Israel Institute’s Dr David Cumin called Dotcom’s views “repugnant” and featuring conspiracies long shown to be false.
“The increasing mainstreaming of antisemitism is definitely very concerning, whether classic Jew-hate or the more modern form of the oldest hatred that demonises the Jewish nation with similar tropes.”
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.
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