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The Strange Case of Kim Schmitz aka “Kim Dotcom”: Cyber Agent Provacateur for the Corporations, Underground Reich?

COMMENT: In the after­math of the arrest of Kim Schmitz aka “Kim Dot­com” in the wake of the MegaU­pload take­down by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, Herr Dot­com has been var­i­ous­ly por­trayed as a mar­tyr for inter­net free­dom and the Sec­ond Com­ing of Christ by his cyber-lib­er­tar­i­an sup­port­ers and as the Beast of the Apoc­a­lypse by his detrac­tors. There is anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty that sug­gests itself.
Per­haps Kim is actu­al­ly in cahoots with some of the very same inter­ests he would have us believe he oppos­es. One should attempt to “fol­low the mon­ey,” as was advised to Water­gate inves­ti­ga­tors Bob Wood­ward and Carl Bern­stein.
A num­ber of things are appar­ent when one exam­ines Herr Dot­com­man­dant:
  • This guy is a 1 per­center and proud of it, giv­en to noth­ing so much as con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion.
  • There’s more to this guy than meets the eye and there is PLENTY of him that meets the eye.
  • At the time of his arrest, he had a bunch of cred­it cards in dif­fer­ent names and mul­ti­ple pass­ports in var­i­ous names. (Schmitz/Dotcom changes names fre­quent­ly, a prac­tice that would impede data­base search­es for his name.)
  • QUICK: How many dif­fer­ent cred­it cards and pass­ports in how many dif­fer­ent names do YOU have?
  • Schmitz/Dotcom is a “turned hacker”–a hack­er who for­sook his life of crime to coop­er­ate with the author­i­ties to devel­op com­put­er secu­ri­ty sys­tems. Julian Assange appears to be anoth­er “turned hack­er.’
  • As such, Dot­com­man­dant may be viewed as an “inside play­er,” at least to an extent.
  • He was con­vict­ed of a num­ber of crimes, which did not pre­vent rel­a­tive­ly pres­ti­gious com­pa­nies from back­ing some of his fraud­u­lent under­tak­ings.
  • Con­vict­ed in what was the largest insid­er trad­ing scan­dal in Ger­many up to that time, he fled Ger­many and was giv­en 20 months pro­ba­tion and a 100,000 euro fine. The Dot­com­man­dant alleged­ly earned $115,000 a day in his lat­est gig. A 100,000 euro fine is basi­cal­ly dock­ing the guy a day’s pay. He got 20 months probation–no jail time. That alto­geth­er gen­tle wrist slap may indi­cate that he has good rela­tions with the pow­ers that be. It cer­tain­ly was not a pun­ish­ment that would deter the likes of the Dot­com­man­dant. (Note that, in gen­er­al, Euro­pean sen­tenc­ing in crim­i­nal cas­es is lighter than in the U.S. Still, that’s not much of a sen­tence for the largest insid­er trad­ing scheme in Ger­many up to that point in time. Remem­ber he fled the coun­try to escape jus­tice. The arti­cle below describes the pun­ish­ment met­ed out to do Schmitz as “repeat­ed lash­es with a wet noo­dle.” Why?
  • Food for Thought:
  • With his over-the-top per­sona and jet set lifestyle, he’s not the best poster boy for cyber-lib­er­tar­i­an­sim. Look­ing like a Goth Drew Carey on steroids, he presents a bizarre phys­i­cal appear­ance to go with his “1 persense­less” behav­ior, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for many to feel sym­pa­thy.
  • MegaU­pload appears to have tak­en com­mer­cial prod­uct pro­duced by oth­ers and then tak­en it to mar­ket at con­sid­er­able prof­it for them­selves. In essence, that’s theft. Seen by his sup­port­ers as some­thing of a mod­ern Robin Hood, that con­struct would have more valid­i­ty if Our Hero were to dis­trib­ute some of his evi­dent wealth to the grips and oth­er lit­tle folks who worked on the films MegaU­pload pirates. If, for the sake of argu­ment, one of these giant media cor­po­ra­tions were brought down by pirat­ed down­load, the Big Boys (and Girls) will float gen­tly to earth on their gold­en para­chutes, while the grips go into “white knuck­le mode.”
  • Note that pirat­ed down­load, among oth­er things, deprives gov­ern­ments at var­i­ous lev­els of sales and income tax rev­enues, plac­ing added strain and their bud­gets. Ulti­mate­ly, the more those bud­gets are strained, the more peo­ple get laid off from their jobs–police, fire­fight­ers, DMV clerks etc . In FTR #732, we not­ed that the Pirate Bay case fea­tured a clash between two right-wing views: it’s OK to steal rev­enue from gov­ern­ments but NOT OK to steal rev­enue from cor­po­ra­tions. The same appears to apply in the MegaU­pload case.
  • The Dot­com­man­dant has appar­ent­ly engaged in a vari­ety of crim­i­nal activ­i­ties in the past.
  • ‘The tim­ing of this bust, com­ing so soon after the jus­ti­fi­able debate over dra­con­ian Inter­net leg­is­la­tion that may have seri­ous­ly lim­it­ed the poten­tial for this remark­able medi­um, sets this observ­er to won­der if he actu­al­ly was work­ing to gen­er­ate sym­pa­thy for SOPA. Per­haps oth­er inter­ests were manip­u­lat­ing Our Hero, run­ning him “on a leash.”
  • In the past, we’ve seen Nazi/fascist mon­ey man Carl Lund­strom financ­ing the Pirate Bay down­load site. He has also alleged­ly been involved in financ­ing a sec­ond free down­load site.
  • We’ve seen the Under­ground Reich engage in mon­ey-mak­ing crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cies rang­ing in size from the short-sell­ing that occurred before the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy and the 9/11 attacks to the Great Train Rob­bery in Britain.
  • Is the Dot­com­man­dant actu­al­ly gen­er­at­ing mon­ey for the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work while dis­cred­it­ing advo­cates of Inter­net free­dom? Note the mon­ey laun­der­ing charges against Our Hero, as well as the shock­ing­ly light sen­tence imposed on him by the Ger­man courts.
  • The oth­er peo­ple involved with MegaU­pload are Ger­mans and peo­ple from areas that were occu­pied by the Nazis in WWII, such as Slo­va­kia. (Slo­va­kia was, like Croa­t­ia, a nom­i­nal­ly inde­pen­dent Nazi pup­pet state, con­trolled by the col­lab­o­ra­tionist Hlin­ka par­ty.)

Have Schmitz/Dotcom been but­tressed and fueled with Nazi ven­ture cap­i­tal, in exchange for part of the prof­its?

The view here is that MegaU­pload and Schmitz/Dotcom’s media antics will serve to dis­cred­it the cause of inter­net free­dom and may serve as pre­text for the big cor­po­ra­tions to crack down hard–and I mean hard–on inter­net free­dom.
That would be deeply trag­ic.
Now, about the Dot­com­man­dant:
 

. . . . With insid­er trad­ing charges pend­ing over Lets­Buy­It, Schmitz decid­ed it was time to lay low (by his stan­dards); “in fear for his life,” he fled to Thai­land in Jan­u­ary of 2002. On his web­site, he hint­ed at pos­si­ble sui­cide, say­ing he would be cross­ing “to a new world,” Hale-Bopp cult style. But instead of off­ing him­self, he declared that he want­ed to be known as “King Kim­ble the First, Ruler of the Kim­pire” — a label he would apply to his future projects. (It’s list­ed as his title on LinkedIn.)

As it turned out, Thai­land wasn’t hap­py to see him. He was prompt­ly arrest­ed and fast-track deport­ed to Ger­many to stand tri­al. How­ev­er, the few nights in a Thai jail turned out to be the worst of it, as fears of prison in Ger­many were unfounded—he was sen­tenced to 20 months pro­ba­tion and slapped with a €100,000 fine. In 2003, he plead­ed guilty to embez­zle­ment charges over the Mon­key “loan” and received anoth­er two years of pro­ba­tion.

After the law’s repeat­ed lash­es with a wet noo­dle, Schmitz left Ger­many and moved to Hong Kong to start the next lev­el of Mega-insan­i­ty. . . .

Discussion

3 comments for “The Strange Case of Kim Schmitz aka “Kim Dotcom”: Cyber Agent Provacateur for the Corporations, Underground Reich?”

  1. The inter­net is dying the ‘death of a thou­sand cuts’. It’s appro­pri­ate that the expres­sion is Chi­nese, since the intense­ly policed inter­net of Chi­na seems to be the mod­el we’re head­ed for.

    Posted by Dwight | February 7, 2012, 4:54 am
  2. Kim Dot­com is throw­ing a par­ty, and every­one in New Zealand is invit­ed:

    Vice
    Moth­er­board
    Kim Dot­com Launched His Polit­i­cal Par­ty
    Writ­ten by
    Vic­to­ria Turk
    @VickiTurk victoria.turk@vice.com
    March 27, 2014 // 08:15 AM EST

    Kim Dotcom’s made the news recent­ly in rela­tion to both his Mega file host­ing busi­ness, which this week announced it was going pub­lic, and his music career, which took off with a debut album release on his Baboom music ser­vice in Jan­u­ary. He’s a man of many hats, but today saw a new Dot­com iden­ti­ty come to the fore: the politi­cian.

    Dot­com offi­cial­ly launched his polit­i­cal par­ty in New Zealand this morn­ing, and it’s about more than copy­right reform (though unsur­pris­ing­ly, that’s high on the agen­da). Pri­va­cy rights, clean tech, and per­haps most intrigu­ing­ly a nation­al dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy also fea­ture on the Inter­net Party’s new­ly active web­site.

    ...

    As you might expect from the name, the Inter­net Par­ty agenda—the full man­i­festo hasn’t yet been released—focuses almost exclu­sive­ly on dig­i­tal issues. Its web­site describes it as “A par­ty that will give you faster, cheap­er Inter­net, cre­ate high-tech jobs, pro­tect your pri­va­cy, and safe­guard our inde­pen­dence.”

    Spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy points men­tioned include cheap­er and faster inter­net with “an end to the band­width monop­oly,” a jobs boost in the tech sec­tor, a bill of dig­i­tal rights to com­bat mass sur­veil­lance, and new copy­right laws.

    The site also boasts plans for a gov­ern­ment-spon­sored New Zealand cur­ren­cy. How that will shape up to Bit­coin or the del­uge of oth­er sov­er­eign cryp­tocur­ren­cies like Iceland’s nation­al­ly dis­trib­uted Auro­ra­coin remains to be seen. All we know so far is from this short blurb:

    The Inter­net Par­ty will sup­port the intro­duc­tion of a New Zealand-spon­sored dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy that is safe, secure and encrypt­ed, pro­vid­ing for instant inter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions at min­i­mal cost. By becom­ing a dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy leader, New Zealand can become a key hub for a grow­ing finan­cial sec­tor.


    There’s a hint of oth­er broad­er poli­cies, too, with men­tion of nation­al inde­pen­dence, a mod­ernised edu­ca­tion sys­tem, and a respon­sive gov­ern­ment.

    Of course, the launch wouldn’t be authen­ti­cal­ly Dot­com with­out a lit­tle uncon­ven­tion­al flair, and it also saw a video “man­i­festo” con­sist­ing of a kind of slap­stick Mis­sion Impos­si­ble par­o­dy, fea­tur­ing a not-too-con­vinc­ing Barack Oba­ma looka­like try­ing to track down the Inter­net Par­ty man­i­festo at Dotcom’s man­sion—a doc­u­ment which appar­ent­ly reveals how to erad­i­cate the need for a mil­i­tary and oil, and turn water into bit­coin.

    But Dotcom’s not jok­ing around when it comes to the polit­i­cal race. To enter Par­lia­ment, the Inter­net Par­ty has to win an elec­toral seat or receive five per­cent of the vote. That might seem like a low num­ber, but it’s by no means a giv­en; for com­par­i­son, Julian Assange’s Wik­ileaks Par­ty only got 0.66 per­cent of the vote in the 2013 Aus­tralian elec­tions.

    How­ev­er, Dot­com has claimed that he’s already got a sit­ting elec­torate MP onboard after talk­ing to mem­bers of oth­er par­ties in what a New Zealand Her­ald edi­to­r­i­al called “the most aggres­sive poach­ing exer­cise in this coun­try’s con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal his­to­ry.”

    Before the par­ty even launched, he’s been embroiled in polit­i­cal ten­sions. He ini­tial­ly planned a free “Par­ty par­ty” to kick off the polit­i­cal ven­ture, but was forced to can­cel when the Elec­toral Com­mis­sion warned it could be seen as buy­ing votes. Then accord­ing to local news sites, he’s been in the awk­ward posi­tion this week of hav­ing to defend own­ing Nazi mem­o­ra­bil­ia includ­ing a signed copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, dis­cus­sion of which he dis­missed as a smear cam­paign direct­ed by the Nation­al Par­ty, one of New Zealand’s two major polit­i­cal par­ties.

    Dot­com him­self is of course still fight­ing extra­di­tion to the US on pira­cy charges over the now-defunct Megau­pload. It seems unlike­ly that will do any­thing to deter the votes of the inter­net gen­er­a­tion Dotcom’s par­ty is tar­get­ing. Soon the polls will tell.

    In Kim Dot­com’s defense, an ultra-rare signed copy of Mein Kampf prob­a­bly is as good an invest­ment as he claims, so the pur­chase of that book, while eye­brow-rais­ing, could be a inno­cent inter­est in WWII his­to­ry. The larg­er con­text of Kim Dot­com’s life and appar­ent beliefs is real­ly need­ed to assess that deci­sion. For instance, if Kim Dot­com was videoed wear­ing a Nazi hel­met too that would add some con­text:

    3 News
    Kim Dot­com defends Nazi hel­met pho­to
    By Brook Sabin

    Polit­i­cal Reporter

    Thurs­day 27 Mar 2014 6:14p.m

    Kim Dot­com’s offi­cial­ly launched his Inter­net Par­ty, as more Nazi images have emerged.

    3 News broke the sto­ry last night that Dot­com owns one of the rarest copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf in exis­tence, now, a pho­to of Dot­com wear­ing a Nazi hel­met has also emerged.

    The inter­net mogul is in dam­age con­trol after last night’s sto­ry — mak­ing a two-minute state­ment to reporters at the launch of the Inter­net Par­ty.

    “Before any­thing else I want to address a very recent alle­ga­tion,” Dot­com said at his man­sion today.

    “It’s a smear cam­paign to try and derail what we are try­ing to achieve today for the launch of the Inter­net Par­ty.

    “I will not go any fur­ther and address these things any fur­ther.”

    3 News revealed Dot­com owns a rare per­son­al­ly signed copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

    Today, a pho­to emerged of Dot­com wear­ing a Nazi hel­met at the 2004 Gum­ball Ral­ly — there’s even a brief bit of video.

    “I don’t real­ly want to respond to any of that,” Dot­com said.

    “A guy from Britain in a Porsche had this hel­met on. He came to me and asked me, ‘Hey, do you want to put it on? I want to take a pho­to.’ I put it on, he took a pho­to, [and] put it on the Gum­ball web­site. It was a two-minute affair, it’s not my hel­met.”

    At his par­ty launch Dot­com released a 10-minute par­o­dy, com­plete with Barack Oba­ma imper­son­ator.

    Then came a claim the par­ty has an ace up its sleeve. Dot­com revealed he’s poached a sit­ting MP who holds an elec­torate. He says it’s not Hone Harawira, but would­n’t reveal any fur­ther details because there’s a con­fi­den­tial­ly agree­ment.

    “I don’t want to give you any hints about who it is,” said Dot­com.

    ...

    Again, it’s actu­al­ly pos­si­ble that Kim Dot­com just hap­pens to own one of the rarest copies of Mein Kampf in exis­tence and does­n’t nor­mal­ly dress up like a Nazi. Weird things hap­pen when you’re a larg­er-than-life weirdo. No, while these are pos­si­ble red-flags, the real test is his par­ty’s poli­cies. Are they far-right poli­cies? Cryp­to-far right poli­cies? That secret plans he men­tioned above for end­ing the need for a mil­i­tary and oil sound­ed pret­ty nice. What are the details of those plans? Are there real ideas behind them or is this more larg­er-than-life hyped non­sense?

    For instance, since Kim Dot­com is propos­ing New Zeland cre­ate its own ver­sion of bit­coin, what does his tax pol­i­cy looke like since a nation­al cryp­to-cur­ren­cy would also poten­tial­ly dou­ble as a nation­al tax-eva­sion ser­vice. And will New Zealand’s bit­coin have a bit­coin-like fixed sup­ply that man­dates Aus­train-school/Bun­des­bank-style eco­nom­ic poli­cies? That sounds like a pret­ty far-right eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy:

    The New Zealand Her­ald
    Chris Bar­ton: Get back to your roots Kim Dot­com
    9:30 AM Tues­day Feb 4, 2014 143 com­ments

    Watch­ing Kim Dot­com’s slow strip reveal­ing his Inter­net Par­ty plans has been excru­ci­at­ing: the leak to Wha­le­oil, the can­cel­la­tion of the extrav­a­gan­za launch par­ty, the com­pro­mise of jour­nal­is­tic inde­pen­dence by unmasked par­ty sec­re­tary Alas­tair Thomp­son, and his sub­se­quent res­ig­na­tion. As a polit­i­cal par­ty launch, this was­n’t a fias­co, it was a train wreck.

    The dis­as­trous start is at odds with the supreme con­fi­dence Dot­com espoused when he dis­cussed his polit­i­cal plans in Sep­tem­ber last year.

    “Every­thing I get into I’m a per­fec­tion­ist,” he told me. “I want to be the best at every­thing that I do and I will make the same attempt with this polit­i­cal par­ty.” Where, I asked, did such dri­ving moti­va­tion come from? “It is just inside me. I can’t explain,” he replied. “I don’t like mediocre. That’s just my nature.” To achieve his grand plan he said: “I want to sur­round myself with a dream team of achiev­ers — peo­ple who get it and want to bring this coun­try for­ward and into the future.”

    So far he seems to have sur­round­ed him­self with team of nin­nies and his achieve­ments look very mediocre indeed. A mega fail. Despite the set­back, I hope he per­se­veres because if he sticks to pol­i­cy, he has an oppor­tu­ni­ty, as Derek Han­d­ley has point­ed out, to give vision­less New Zealand pol­i­tics a bad­ly need­ed jolt.

    If he can rein in his ten­den­cy to mega­lo­ma­nia and let his charis­ma shine, Dot­com has unri­valled exper­tise in three areas that he may be able to artic­u­late into poli­cies. If he com­mu­ni­cates these to per­fec­tion, he may well cap­ture the hearts and minds of a sig­nif­i­cant con­stituen­cy that may be enough to get the Inter­net Par­ty across the 5 per­cent thresh­old. To do so he needs to appeal to not just the young, the dis­grun­tled and the can’t-be-both­ered-to vote, but also to a sig­nif­i­cant bunch with lean­ings to the right or an inde­pen­dent point of view.

    In oth­er words, entre­pre­neurs and geeks.

    I sus­pect the main rea­son the Inter­net Par­ty is in so much strife is that it’s aligned itself too much with the left which, on mat­ters inter­net, has shown itself to be ter­ri­bly incom­pe­tent — espe­cial­ly dur­ing last year’s protests against the GCSB Bill when there was no co-ordi­nat­ed online and social media cam­paign, let alone a way to donate to the cause online. As a result, much to the dis­may of many attend­ing, the meet­ings were cap­tured by old-school hard left ide­ol­o­gy and tire­some pass-the-buck­et fund­ing col­lec­tions.

    It’s worth not­ing that the far right, which should, through its lib­er­tar­i­an ide­ol­o­gy, be opposed such state inter­ven­tion in indi­vid­ual lives, was nowhere to be seen at the GCSB bill protests. Worse still, the Act par­ty betrayed its ideals and vot­ed for the GCSB leg­is­la­tion.

    It is weird, how­ev­er, that the left has tak­en up with Dot­com. The left is not his nat­ur­al home. When he first came to New Zealand, he sought out the far right in the shape of John Banks for assis­tance. He’s clear­ly pro tax min­imi­sa­tion for busi­ness­es — evi­denced by his set­ting up Megau­pload in Hong Kong where it was on a 4 per cent tax rate. It’s also plain to see he’s a busi­ness­man who likes to make obscene amounts of mon­ey, flaunt his wealth with extrav­a­gant spend­ing and have ser­vants respond­ing to his beck and call — hard­ly the hall­mark of a left-winger.

    ...

    An inter­net par­ty found­ed by a hack­er with cryp­to-far-right views that seems to be tar­get­ing dis­en­chant­ed youths under a vague ban­ner of “dig­i­tal right” and promis­es that the inter­net could solve all of our prob­lems if it was just allowed to do so? How odd. Although it’s not as odd as the fact that sto­ry like this aren’t real­ly very sur­pris­ing any­more.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 29, 2014, 3:48 pm
  3. That did­n’t end well:

    BBC

    Kim Dot­com elec­tion defeat: ‘My name was poi­son’

    Tech­nol­o­gy mil­lion­aire Kim Dot­com has apol­o­gised for his par­ty’s fail­ure in New Zealand’s gen­er­al elec­tion.
    22 Sep­tem­ber 2014 Last updat­ed at 12:41 ET

    His Inter­net-Mana Par­ty failed to win a seat, as Prime Min­is­ter John Key’s Nation­al Par­ty increased its major­i­ty.

    “The brand ‘Kim Dot­com’ was poi­son for what we were try­ing to achieve,” the Ger­man-born entre­pre­neur said.

    He is fac­ing pos­si­ble extra­di­tion to the US over MegaU­pload, his stor­age web­site the US says was used to host files ille­gal­ly. He denies all charges.

    Mr Dot­com — who lives in a man­sion near Auck­land — was arrest­ed by armed police in Jan­u­ary 2012.

    ‘Good luck’

    After being grant­ed bail in Feb­ru­ary 2012, he launched the Inter­net Par­ty, a polit­i­cal group that pledged to end gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance of New Zealand cit­i­zens — a stance buoyed by the alle­ga­tions made by US intel­li­gence leak­er Edward Snow­den.

    The Inter­net Par­ty’s poli­cies also focused on bet­ter inter­net access across the coun­try.

    As a for­eign nation­al, Mr Dot­com could not him­self stand in the elec­tion, and so instead appoint­ed trade union­ist Laila Harre as leader.

    The Inter­net Par­ty also formed an alliance with the minor Mana Par­ty, a break­away group from the big­ger Maori Par­ty.

    Inter­net-Mana, as the part­ner­ship was named, did not attract enough votes to win a seat, with the Mana Par­ty’s leader Hone Harawira los­ing his seat.

    “I’m sor­ry. I take full respon­si­bil­i­ty for this loss,” said Mr Dot­com after the vote.

    In a tweet, he con­grat­u­lat­ed Prime Min­is­ter Mr Key: “New Zealan­ders have cho­sen Nation­al and John Key to lead. I con­grat­u­late the prime min­is­ter. Please do your best for all Kiwis. Good luck.”

    ...

    Mr Dot­com’s fall, rise and fall again pro­vid­ed one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing peri­ods in the his­to­ry of New Zealand pol­i­tics.

    When I vis­it­ed the sprawl­ing Dot­com Man­sion ear­li­er this year to make a make a film for BBC Click, it was arguably at the height of the man’s pop­u­lar­i­ty. He’d won a few cru­cial court bat­tles relat­ed to his copy­right cas­es, and his new web­site, Mega, was enjoy­ing seri­ous suc­cess. It still is.

    Dur­ing my stay he host­ed a par­ty for the new­ly signed up mem­bers of the Inter­net Par­ty, open­ing up the man­sion for a day out and a chance to “Swim with Kim”.

    It was there I met one of his sup­port­ers who, while offer­ing sup­port, said he was wor­ried the whole thing would strug­gle to become any­thing oth­er than “the Kim Dot­com Show”.

    Some of Mr Dot­com’s aides sus­pect­ed the young man may have been plant­ed by an oppo­nent — a gift for TV reporters need­ing a neg­a­tive sound­bite.

    But real­ly that sup­port­er was pre­cise­ly what Mr Dot­com need­ed — a sane, dis­sent­ing voice in a world seem­ing­ly full of yes-men and women. His team was made up of fan­tas­tic, hard-work­ing peo­ple — but it was by no means unwa­ver­ing sup­port. They were, like so many in Mr Dot­com’s life, along for the ride.

    Many sus­pect­ed that Mr Dot­com’s moti­va­tion for enter­ing pol­i­tics was to help him fight his pira­cy case. If that was the case, it has­n’t worked.

    As Mr Dot­com’s polit­i­cal ambi­tions ebb away, the crim­i­nal charges he faces remain very real.

    His next extra­di­tion hear­ing is due to take place in Feb­ru­ary.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 22, 2014, 2:23 pm

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