The New Zealand legal system is now questioning whether there will ever be a trial of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom after the FBI and the US Government were accused of “legal stuff ups”.The New Zealand Federal judge Liam O’Grady said recently “I frankly don’t know that we are ever going to have a trial in this matter.”
If the extradition application is aborted, the move could be a major blow to the Hollywood studios who last week lost their Australian High Court application in the iiNet copyright case.
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O’Grady expressed concern to the FBI over the issue of whether Megaupload has been served with the proper court papers.
Dotcom’s lawyers have jumped on the mistakes made by the FBI, arguing it provides new grounds to reject his extradition. According to local New Zealand media the judge in the case is not happy with errors made in the case after local law enforcement filed the wrong type of restraining order in seizing assets.
Ira Rothken, one of Dotcom’s lawyers, claims it’s not possible to serve defendants in criminal actions overseas with papers.
“My understanding as to why they [the FBI] haven’t done that is because they can’t,” lawyers claim.
“We don’t believe Megaupload can be served in a criminal matter because it is not located within the jurisdiction of the United States,” they said.
Dotcom’s extradition was never 100 percent assured, and the judge is making a lot of his decisions, including whether to approve a limited appearance by Dotcom’s new celebrity lawyer with some weighing of what might happen if the extradition never happens. The US judge believes that the New Zealand judge goes first.
Kim Dotcom is furious with the US Government for destroying his businesses and rendering hundreds of people unemployed. According to Dotcom, the case is the result of “corruption on the highest political level, serving the interests of the copyright extremists in Hollywood.”
“The US government has terminated Megaupload, Megavideo and 10 other subsidiaries, including a company called N1 Limited that was developing a clothing line,” Dotcom told TorrentFreak.
“They destroyed 220 jobs. Millions of legitimate Mega users have no access to their files.”
If Judge O’Grady is to be believed all this damage could very well have been for nothing because the authorities simply can’t serve foreign companies. This could lead one to wonder whether the whole setup was to simply destroy Mega’s businesses.
