{"id":507913,"date":"2026-07-03T12:47:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T12:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/507913\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T12:47:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T12:47:18","slug":"is-kim-dotcom-really-closer-than-ever-to-being-extradited-to-the-us-the-front-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/507913\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Kim Dotcom really closer than ever to being extradited to the US? \u2013 The Front Page"},"content":{"rendered":"

NZ Herald senior writer David Fisher told The Front Page<\/a> that the Court of Appeal has rejected Dotcom\u2019s latest bid to escape extradition, but the story\u2019s not over yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cDotcom\u2019s legal team has indicated that the next step will be an appeal to the Supreme Court and that\u2019s not surprising. I mean, this has been a feature of the Dotcom case throughout.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf something happens that he or his co-accused don\u2019t like, or rather he doesn\u2019t like, then he will tackle it in court. Fair enough, that\u2019s the right place for it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The judges also upheld Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith\u2019s assessment<\/a> that extradition would not expose him to disproportionately severe punishment or the likelihood of a disparity between a US and a New Zealand sentence.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe court didn\u2019t 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On whether this is the beginning of the end of the Dotcom saga, Fisher doesn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things about the Dotcom case is that it has stress-tested every single part of our system, right? He\u2019s had a huge amount of money, and he\u2019s 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\u2019t much of one.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be very interesting to see which way it goes from here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Listen to the full episode<\/a> to hear more about:<\/p>\n

What happens nextHow did we get here?The infamous 2012 raid.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NZ Herald senior writer David Fisher told The Front Page that the Court of Appeal has rejected Dotcom\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[682,1550,10001,380,16186,6440,253141,1668,12515,185,12125,6712,130,3025,111,43,139,69,28630,18154,5970,115030,12633,131,223,61,3040,2963],"class_list":["post-507913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-being","tag-centre","tag-closer","tag-decade","tag-dotcom","tag-ever","tag-extradited","tag-front","tag-highprofile","tag-is","tag-kim","tag-legal","tag-more","tag-most","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-page","tag-political","tag-really","tag-sagas","tag-spent","tag-than","tag-the","tag-to","tag-us","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}