New Zealand tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom has lashed out at the US government as his decades-long effort to avoid extradition on fraud and money laundering charges appears to have failed.
Local media reported that New Zealand's justice minister had signed an extradition order for Dotcom, the founder of the Megaupload file-sharing system.
He faces charges including fraud, money laundering and racketeering, which are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Dotcom has long fought extradition, portraying himself publicly as a defender of Internet freedom and claiming he was being persecuted for political reasons.
He is an outspoken supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and enthusiastically shares the Kremlin's arguments that the war in Ukraine could trigger nuclear armageddon.
“I love New Zealand. I will not leave,” he wrote defiantly in a series of posts.
"I would do it all over again," he said, while calling the U.S. government "criminal."
His website - an early prototype of cloud storage - was shut down when New Zealand police raided Dotcom's Auckland mansion in January 2012 at the behest of the FBI.
US prosecutors claim that the Megaupload service facilitated the widespread piracy of films and publications, which cost rights holders more than 500 million | BGNES
.jpeg)
