NZ Herald senior writer David Fisher told The Front Page that the Court of Appeal has rejected Dotcom’s latest bid to escape extradition, but the story’s not over yet.
“Dotcom’s legal team has indicated that the next step will be an appeal to the Supreme Court and that’s not surprising. I mean, this has been a feature of the Dotcom case throughout.
“If something happens that he or his co-accused don’t like, or rather he doesn’t like, then he will tackle it in court. Fair enough, that’s the right place for it,” he said.
The Court of Appeal ruled that Dotcom was not extended the same opportunity to fight charges in New Zealand courts as his co-accused did because he had not pleaded guilty, was the alleged ringleader and the US never agreed to withdraw the extradition request.
Co-defendants Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk cut a deal in which they pleaded guilty in New Zealand courts and served time in prison here.
The judges also upheld Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith’s assessment that extradition would not expose him to disproportionately severe punishment or the likelihood of a disparity between a US and a New Zealand sentence.
“One of the cases that has been made throughout is that the US has an incredibly punitive justice system. Those comparisons that were put forward to the court, that at a minimum Dotcom would serve 30 years, at a maximum it would be 150 years, whereas in New Zealand, well, you know, it might be 12 to 15.
“The court didn’t see a great deal in that. There were some pretty cold arguments there too about whether there was a great deal of difference between 30 years and 150 years because either way, it could well be the rest of his natural life,” he said.
On whether this is the beginning of the end of the Dotcom saga, Fisher doesn’t know.
“One of the things about the Dotcom case is that it has stress-tested every single part of our system, right? He’s had a huge amount of money, and he’s used that to fuel a remarkable legal engine. Initially, Paul Davison, and then most recently Ron Mansfield, both tremendous lawyers who have done incredible work arguing his case even when it seemed like there wasn’t much of one.
“It’ll be very interesting to see which way it goes from here,” he said.
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The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5pm. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
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