“Mr Dotcom needs to be surrendered to the U.S. to face trial,” Mr Goldsmith mentioned. (File)

Wellington:

Kim Dotcom, who’s going through legal prices regarding the defunct file-sharing web site Megaupload, will likely be extradited to the USA from New Zealand, the New Zealand justice minister mentioned on Thursday.

German-born Dotcom, who has New Zealand residency, has been preventing extradition to the USA since 2012 following a FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith signed an extradition order for Dotcom, a spokesperson for the Minister of Justice mentioned

“I thought of the entire info rigorously, and have determined that Mr Dotcom needs to be surrendered to the U.S. to face trial,” Goldsmith mentioned in a press release.

“As is widespread observe, I’ve allowed Mr Dotcom a brief time frame to think about and take recommendation on my resolution. I cannot, due to this fact, be commenting additional at this stage.”

In a publish on social media web site X on Tuesday, Dotcom mentioned “the obedient US colony within the South Pacific simply determined to extradite me for what customers uploaded to Megaupload”, in what seems to be a reference to the extradition order.

Reuters couldn’t instantly contact Dotcom for a response.

U.S. authorities say Dotcom and three different Megaupload executives price movie studios and document firms greater than $500 million by encouraging paying customers to retailer and share copyrighted materials, which generated greater than $175 million in income for the web site.

The corporate’s chief advertising officer Finn Batato and chief technical officer and co-founder Mathias Ortmann, each from Germany, together with a 3rd govt Dutch nationwide Bram van der Kolk have been arrested with Dotcom in 2012.

Ortmann and van der Kolk entered plea offers that noticed them sentenced in 2023 to jail phrases in New Zealand however allowed them to keep away from extradition. Batato died in 2022 in New Zealand.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)