The bank accounts, mansions, cars & watches are safe for now

Jun 4, 2015 08:34 GMT  ·  By

Kim Dotcom scored a big victory in his long-waged battles with the United States. The High Court of New Zealand ruled Wednesday June 3 that the US cannot seize Kim Dotcom's personal assets, as Ars Technica reports.

The entire affair is quite a legal mess and revolves around Kim Dotcom's former business, the infamous Megaupload file sharing locker.

For years now, the US is trying to extradite Kim Dotcom to the States so he can face charges of copyright infringement, but all their efforts have been until now thwarted by New Zeeland courts that have been continuously ruling in Dotcom's favor.

Legal technicalities save Dotcom's estate

The latest episode stems from March this year, when a Virginia, US federal court defaulted on a decision and issued an asset seizure order, which was supposed to be enforced in New Zeeland following a series of legal agreements between the two countries.

The assets seizure was opposed by Dotcom's lawyers, who argued that the defendant isn't a US citizen, never traveled to the US, and by seizing his assets he wouldn't be able to fund his legal fees and defend himself properly.

It also helped that the procedure according to which the US had the right to seize Dotcom's assets wasn't recognized in New Zeeland law.

A New Zeeland court in Auckland agreed and allowed Kim Dotcom and his Megaupload partner, Bram Van der Kolk, to keep their assets for now.

This is not the first time the US has tried to get their hands on Dotcom's assets, previously freezing his bank accounts in Hong Kong back in 2012. Kim sued and won, but an appeal from Hong Kong authorities refroze them again.

If the US had won the New Zeeland case, Kim Dotcom would have been in bigger troubles than the last time. Dotcom owns quite a lot of assets in New Zeeland, the bulk of his estate, ranging from yachts to a large fleet of cars, and a few million dollars in various bank accounts.